Are Web and Offset skills like Strippers to Digital prepress in the 90’s

More and more as I speak with offset and web press operators I find myself asking if they have exposure to digital printers. Its not just me thinking that things are going more in that direct, but that it is what my clients are asking me to provide them. What this reminds me of is the way it went for strippers in the 1990’s.

During the 90’s there was a fundamental shift in printing firms on how prepress was done. No longer were companies using traditional strippers, they were installing digital prepress systems. While the traditional stripers had a lot of critical experience such as understanding color separation and the capabilities of the printing presses, they were no longer needed unless they also had digital prepress skills, both software and hardware. This change had very telling effects on the prepress positions. First, those that did not want to learn new skills were no longer able to find work and when they did, it was at substantially lower payrates. Those that did make the effort and invested in themselves to learn the new skill sets were able to stay in the industry as digital prepress people. At first those with traditional and new skill sets were in the biggest demand. As time has gone by digital prepress workers no longer need the skills of the traditional strippers and people with just digital prepress skills have all the tools for the modern prepress jobs.

Traditional offset and web press operators are now in a very similar situation. Those segments of the industry are shrinking and with that comes fewer jobs. Those that are relectant to increase their computer skills and spend time learning about the new digital equipment will find themselves with fewer and fewer job options. While I do feel at this time that having both offset/web skills and digital print skills will be valuable in some situations, it seems that a digital printer doesnt need to rely only on an ink on paper back ground. Many digital prepress operators are able to run the digital printers at this point. In fact most firms will ask for someone  with offset backgrounds OR prepress backgrounds to be trained on a digital printer.

If you are an offset or web press operator and pondering your career moving forward, please heed the lessons of strippers in the 1990’s. Look at gaining better computer skills and seeking opportunities to get your hands on digital printers. Do this while your current skills can still keep you employed. This way you will be positioning yourself for your future, as it is likely you may need both skills sets to finish out your career.

Virtual Worlds and Online gaming more than entertainment?

Great insights on the future of video games and virtual worlds at Cyberposium 13 at the Harvard Business School. The panel consisting of the following people:   

Cory Bridges – Executive VP at Multiverse 

Mark Kern – CEO of Red 5 Studios

Chris Carella  - Chief Creative Officer of the Electric Sheep company 

Curt Schilling – Pitcher of the Boston Red Sox and owner of 38 Studio’s a video game development firm working on a self funded MMO.

 

Philip Rosedale – CEO of Linden Labs, makers of Second Life 

 

Mike Hirshland – A VC that invests in entertainment, web and gaming. 

 

The topic for this great panel are Online games and Virtual Worlds more than just entertainment.  Which anyone paying attention to this space right now understands they are. Serious games and virtual worlds are making significant increases in awareness and applications from education to B2B applications. 

 

Picture of panel: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting post on Print CEO Blog

Print CEO blog had an interesting piece on Reading in America. Please find the original post here: Click Here Below is my comments on this. Brian Regan Comments:

Interactive media is here to stay. I was just having a discussion with my wife over the holiday weekend. We were at her parents home and I was silently watching their habits. My take was that their generation use media differently.

First off they watch TV, this medium tells them the story or information and they sit and watch it, not much interaction between them and the TV, although my Father in-law was not very happy about the Giants losing. During these times I would be online working on Second Life projects or posting on various forums about topics that interested me and I wanted to debate upon or on LinkedIN and networking.

The next was reading the newspaper. They spend Sunday morning reading a few different newspapers. At the same time I spent time reading my news online and using Google searches to dig deeper into things I found interesting and finding different things to read that spread out from there.

In both cases my in-laws sat back and read or watched what they were told to watch or read. Were as I spent time digging into things I wanted to learn more about and interacting with my media. We had some discussions at dinner and bother my in-laws and I knew about the latest news and various significant issues locally, nationally and globally.

In regards to reading less, I feel that I read quite a lot and find many things that interest me. From there I will tend to purchase access to sites with good material, buy books on the subjects and subscribe to magazines.

Interactive media is changing many things. Virtual Worlds like Second Life are drastically changing how our higher education schools are teaching future generations. No longer do they sit in classrooms and lecture, but use 3D worlds to explain their topics, allow students to interact with them with the environments. 

Recruiting and Second Life – Blog posts

Spent some time on Friday evening googling “Second Life” and Recruiting. Found some interesting discussions happening from around the world. Decided to share some of Semper’s experiences and how we look at using Second Life as a business tool and as a recruitment platform.

Enjoy.

Brian Regan
Preident
Semper International

The first is from Fallon Planning. The actual blog post was rather short, but the people that posted responses had some good information. This is what I posted in response.

The issue as I see it that large corp’s just dont seem to want to put the effort into making the social networks work for them. I think they will put money into them and then jump out if it is not easily won success. Certainly they have their reasons and that is their call.

My firm Semper International is one of those first firms in, we were the first staffing firm in, although the big ones Like Kelly and Manpower are now saying they are.

These networks do work if you apply yourself to them and you develop the social side of it. We have been successful in Second Life in 3 primary ways.

1) We have extracted contractors out of SL and use them now.

2) We use it for Internal Semper training and communication.

3) We hold mass recruitment parties at our SIm and bring people into SL to prescreen them and pick the ones we want to interview in the RL. You can read more detail on our blog:

http://semperllc.wordpress.com/2007/07/20/semper-internationals-first-mass-presentation-and-pre-screening/

In the end, t takes a lot of people power and effort to message these things into a benefit. However, the next generation is going to be VERY adapted to this type of environment and that is something a lot of people need to understand.

I personally love SL for recruitment purposes.

The next Blog I hit was an HR consulting firm Engage. It was the third post of a three part serious on recruiting in SL.

First off I was flattered that they rightfully acknowledged Semper as the first one in and listed us at the beginning of the list in the first sentence, shows a lot of class. The write up on us was fair as well. They asked if any of the firms in SL wanted to comment, so I took that invitation.

I will respond.

Brian Regan from Semper International here.

I am loving SL as a part of our recruitment strategy. Sure being the first in was a cool PR thing, but we are not terribly interested in making PR posts about doing what we entered there to do.

The reality is that we use our SL presense for more than just recruiting residents out of SL. We actually bring a lot of new residents into SL for mass interviewing for our Video Game staffing division. This has been a great success in regards to mass pre-screening.

There has been a decent result in us extracting talent from SL and even more so, finding talented people for SL projects for us internally for non SL related things.

We tested voice last night and it was AWESOME, we plan on our first internal training seminar for our recruiters and sales force in the coming weeks, once the voice client is more stable.

In the end, we are making SL work for us. It is not a simple thing, but if you think it through and execute well you can make a very good well rounded situation for yourself.

True, some people should wait to enter. If your firm is not designed to be accustomed to change and adapt quicky it is likely better to let those of us that have entered learn and experiment and read our blogs or get the Recruiting in SL for dummies books etc.

Can the Graphic Arts industry pay enough?

We frequently hear the complaint that not enough people are entering our industry, that many skilled people are leaving the industry and that the over all supply of labor for the graphic arts industry is to low.

From my perspective, I tend to agree that asides from demographic constraints the industry has wider labor problems then normal. The recent articles about the dearth of students and the simplifying of the print process (PressTek’s and Frank Romano’s)are both good pieces to consider. One piece talks about the fact that less students are interested and links it to why students are attracted to being Graphic artists and creative and the other article reflects on making the print process easier IE: requiring less skill, and therefore enlarging the possible labor pool to attract from.

My contribution to the debate would be to look at the attraction part of the equation. The economics of our industry is critical to its ability to compete with other industries. If an industry is contracting, under intense margin pressure and is dealing with extreme change then it’s abilities to attract labor compared to other industries are substantially reduced. If we look at our industry we can see areas of growth and contraction it would be interesting to see if Trendwatch has any data on each industry segment and see if the growth, renewal and transformation part out weighs the decline side. We all see the consolidations and resulting reduction in supply happening in the industry but the increase in productivity in the industry vs the market penetration of print could well be a major cause of this. One way or the other the industry has clearly not been able to compete with other industries for the labor force it needs. The number one way to compete is in payrates for key positions, time after time we see companies looking for skilled workers at payrates the worker would be unable to afford a car on let alone cover room and board. Many of the positions in print do require a higher skill level and years of training to become expert so to lose existing skilled people to other industries and to not be able to attract new students will have a serious effect, Frank Ramono’s recent article mentions the industry needs a minimum of X workers a year just to cover retirement rates underscores the seriousness of the situation.

Payrates are one area but coolness or trendiness is important as well, in order to attract the next generation then the industry needs to understand that generation and use that understanding to get the attention of the labor force. I bet Apple has little problem attracting the labor it needs now. There are many other areas to discuss, if an industry is known to be in trouble then its longevity is in question. This longevity directly impacts our ability to attract labor, who wants to invest years to learn how to run a press and find that the positions will be phased out over the next 10 years. So, the real issue here is that in order to attract labor the industry needs to be successful, to be profitable and in such a way that the wealth generated can be shared with our labor force. The case studies on the airline industry, the steel, car and shoe industries are all to emblazoned in history to ignore. We must learn to embrace change and the potential for new rewards it brings. For without profits we will continue to lose the labor wars and our very industry would be in trouble.

We as an industry still have significant influence when we work together IE the recent Kinko/Adobe issue. Lets use our influence to address the very real labor issues we all face.

I look forward to your input.

David Regan
Semper International

Print recruitment, we need a flow

There is a tremendous amount of buzz (as there needs to be) about the talent issue the Print industry is facing. There are many passionate people out there trying to create ways to address this. The general concensous is that it needs to be an industry wide effort and I agree with that logic.

I recently left the below post in response to this post found on the PrintCEO Blog. The specific blog post was titled Industry recruitment: why “cool” come-ons have a chilling effect.

At Semper International we are always encounting the effects of the lack of talent. While it is heartening to know that it is not just the print industry, we still need to focus resources and energy on getting our fair share of the talent supply.

My response.

I disagree in some ways with this post. While I agree that the industry needs solid, strong work ethic and bright people, it is rather arrogant to suggest that the attractiuon process be scoffed at in any creative form. The object is to create a buzz and gain excitemnt to create a pool of interested people.

Once you have a pool you can then thin it out based on skill requirments, work ethic and other primary needs of the industry. The object is not to create a situation where you scare most young people away before the industry is able to explain it self to them and dare I say RECRUIT the good ones. We need to make sure we have a healthy amount of talented young people in print related college courses and taking advantage of the scholarships that are out there.

The other issue that you did not address is the parents. It amazes me that printing people drive their own children away from the industry. I am proud of my print back ground and the values it has given me. I would not change it for anything. If anyone needs to be recruited to help its the parents. Your print executive many not be cool to the younger people, but they will sure resonate with the parents. Lets not forget them in this issue or its solutions. This issue not just about the young people coming in, but a multi-tiered approach.

Brian Regan
President
Semper International
Printing Jobs

Learning Management Systems and Second Life???

The Boston Second Life Meetup group was asked to host an event this week that put together BlackBoard developers and Linden Lab developers in a social setting. This event was sponsored by Semper International. Along with the BB and LL developers could be found educators from schools such as Princeton, UMass, Duke and an assortment of Second Life business people and enthusiasts. The event was held near where the BlackBoard Developers Conference was being held.

The interesting parts of the dialog were around the how, why and should Second Life and an LMS (Learning Management System) like BlackBoard be combined into a blended system. What Second Life lacks is an easy way to track and contain data in an easily accessible way. Along side the inefficiencies of 3D for reading text begs for a more robust data tracking application. As Jeremy Kemp discusses in his piece “Putting a Second Life “metaverse” skin on Learning Management Systems, “MUVE’s including SL are very poor document repositories. The note cards used used with SL are simple text documents which can support only very limited formatting.” A must needed tool for searching these documents and categorizing them would greatly enhance the process.

It was also interesting to hear some of the complaints aired by BlackBoard users about the lack of reporting capabilities. That while a great product BlackBoard had a lot of limitations. My discussion with one of the BB dev’s was cut short by hosting duties, but I am very interested in talking with him more.

One interesting benefit of a combined SL/LMS is on practical testing. If you are teaching specific skills such as Architecture and wanted to test the proficiency of a person it makes sense that using SL as the test and having a LMS connected to it that tracks things like time per action, keyboard shortcuts used and other specific abilities would be of great value to an educator in understanding their students understand of certain tools and programs. This is just one example of the benefits of this type of integration.

The interface could be an interesting project as well. Would it be as simple as a SL client wrapped in the LMS skin, with interactive tabs along the outer edges for navigation. Or a full 3D immersed solution where you interact with objects “in world” that lead one to the desired functionality. My guess is that the former is a better path.

This dialog has some interesting potential and I would love to see it continued and flushed out. The energy at this event was positive and there seemed to be good dialog happening between LL and BB developers. The others at the event should take with them a sense of commitment to let let it be know they are interested in this discussion moving forward and will push for it.

Brian Regan
COO
Semper International