We’ve been blogging about the technical infrastructure needs of creative businesses as well as publishing a local production events list at this site for close to a year. You may or may not have been aware that we’ve also been blogging about the special needs of managing creatives for more than four years at Creative Reaction.

We kept separate Twitter handles to brand each blog separately, plus an additional handle for our Back Bay Creative Collaborators Meetup Group – mostly for job postings. Two Blogs and Three Twitter handles is simply too much to manage! So we’ve rebranded and consolidated everything in one place under a new name – ka-POW-er!

Please visit ka-POW-er.com where you will find all of the Creative Reaction archives as well as our latest technology ruminations.

(If you are one of our RSS subscribers, remember to add the ka-POW-er! feed to your News Reader of choice)

fusion IT clients and creative colleagues may be interested in the events listed here.

This Month:

Sunday, December 5th, 10:00 AM – 8:30 PM - The Crowdfunding Success Summit (a live, online conference)

Thursday, December 9th, 6:00 – 9:00 PM –  Holiday BOSFCPUG & Boston DSLR Meetup Mixer, featuring Richard Harrington.

Friday, December 10th, 7:00 PM – MPC Premiere Event – The Fighter (followed by Social Time at Felt)

Thursday, December 16th, 5:30 – 9:00 PM –  2010 AICP Show Boston at the ICA. The Art and Technique of the American Commercial

(PLUS, it’s Holiday Party Season. If there’s a party that is NOT by invitation only, contact me to include it on this list.)

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Shape the future of the Massachusetts Creative Economy - Join the Massachusetts Production Coalition.

The Problem with Adobe by blogger Edwin Watkeys is a very astute analysis of what happens when profits are put ahead of connecting with customers. He states,

“Ever since the development of PDF, Adobe has seemed more interested in creating vertically-integrated, cross-media corporate publishing solutions”

Adobe decided that selling one application at a time to one customer at a time is too much work. They want a bigger score. They want SMBs (Small/Medium Businesses) and Large Corporations, to whom they can sell multiple copies of entire suites of software. So while Adobe products are affordable in the context of a business, they have been priced beyond the reach of most freelance artists and designers, who either turn to mis-used educational discounts or piracy, or simply do not use the software at all. These users don’t have a business model to justify such an expense. To them, Adobe’s products are not worth the asking price. This results in a fundamental disconnect.

“The people who write the check for Adobe products are not the primary users of those products.” They are more often than not, business owners, IT departments and CFOs, leading Watkeys to wonder aloud, “Who are Adobe’s customers? The purchasers or the users?”

He contrasts this with Apple’s products:

“Not because they’re a group of better human beings, but because their goal is to make money selling stuff to people who use the stuff that they buy. People who have an emotional and practical attachment to it. Because it works for them.” (emphasis mine)

So Watkeys has decided to vote with his dollars.

“That’s why I’ve been shopping for a new illustration tool for the last three years or so, one built by a company that wants to win my money by making something that I love enough to pay for.”

The message to corporations: don’t look for shorter-term gains at the expense of alienating the people who use your products. Monopolies are beginning to show cracks and the Internet is leveling the plying field. Microsoft, pay attention!

“Show (users) their world in innovative ways, and let them interact with it like never before. In our experience, users really respond to polish, both in functionality and user interface. Go the extra mile. Give them more than they expect. And take them places where they have never been before.”

Words to live by for any service-oriented business.

Some thought-provoking ideas from Sapient’s Dan Willis, where at first glance, he appears to be trashing beautiful design.

Bear with him for a moment, and you’ll see he’s right. Good design is the result of good strategy and problem solving.

Without mentioning it, he’s in agreement with Apple, which defines good design as how well something works.

fusion IT clients and creative colleagues may be interested the the following events. Contact us (info in footer) or leave a comment to suggest other events which inspire, connect & equip creative businesses.

Monday, July 12th

6:30 – 8:00 PM Back Bay Creative Coworkers Meetup. Discuss plans for ka-POW-er (spaces) Back Bay – a planned Coworking space for writers, designers, producers, filmmakers and other small creative businesses in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood – let’s pool ideas and contacts, and make it a reality!

Wednesday, July 14th

6:30 – 9:30 PM Boston Final Cut Pro User Group Workflow Mixer at Autodesk, Waltham. Patrick Inhofer will present the Boston premiere of “The Tao of Color Grading – Featuring the Euphonix MC Color control surface and Apple’s Color”. Then Dean Schirm of Autodesk will demystify Smoke for Mac OS X. FREE (registration required)

Saturday or Sunday, July 17th or 18th

All Day. Philip Bloom “Harnessing the Power of your DSLR” Workshop. $99. Same all-day seminar, both days.

Derek Sivers offers some excellent advice on hiring a programmer, though three of the first four steps can be applied to almost any creative endeavor in which you are hiring outside expertise. Those steps are:

• Reduce your big idea to “Version 1.0”. What is the “bare minimum that would make you happy, and people would find useful.”
• Write a simple overview of what it does.
• Break it up into milestones. (Approximately a day’s work)

It’s sobering to think about how many projects I’ve come across which only communicate a few vague adjectives such as “cool” or “cutting edge” to the designers and programmers. If nothing else, start with Derek’s advice.

This Harvard Business Review post by Mavericks at Work author, Bill Taylor, gives us something to think about over the weekend.

It’s a question posed by ad legend Roy Spence of GSD&M:  If your company went out of business tomorrow, would anybody really miss you and why?

Your employees? Your clients? Your Vendors? Are you making the sort of impact on them that a year later, their lives and businesses would still be impacted? Taylor states:

“If your customers can live without you, eventually they will.”

How can you differentiate your business from your competitors? How can you create emotional connections around your brand? How can you create an experience for your clients? How can you forge better relationships with the people who bring you business?

If you think your small business doesn’t need this level of planning and strategy? Think again.

fusion IT clients and creative colleagues may be interested the the following events. Contact us (info in footer) or leave a comment to suggest other events which inspire, connect & equip creative businesses.

This week is quite possibly the biggest week ever for Production, Post, and Advertising events in Boston!

Tuesday, June 22nd

5 – 9PM Rule Boston Camera 1st Annual Tech Expo at Rule | Boston Camera, 395 Western Ave (Drop Off and Pick Up Entrance) · Boston, MA (fusion IT will be there!)

6 – 9PM Pecha Kucha Boston 18 Elks Lodge, 55 Bishop Richard Allen Dr, Cambridge (near Central Sq T) (a fusion IT favorite; just not this time)

Wednesday, June 23rd

6 – 9PM Revolve Nation’s Boston Entrepreneur Group - Summer “Kick-Off” Event: Large Group Networking at The Greatest Bar, 262 friend Street, 4th floor, Boston, MA. A great way for small businesses to pick up an entrepreneurial vibe. Check it out! (fusion IT will be there!)

Thursday, June 24th

8 – 10 AM MITX presents Content Strategy – Understanding Context and Deciding Delivery Methods at UK Trade & Investment, 1 Broadway, Cambridge, MA

8 AM – 6 PM Ad Club of Boston presents The EDGE Conference: Branded in Boston. This event has SOLD OUT! There is now a waiting list.

Friday, June 25th

5 – 9:30 PM 1st Annual Boston SuperMeet! fusion IT is a Media Sponsor of this event. Back Bay Events Center, John Hancock Hall, 180 Berkeley Street, Boston, MA. Click HERE to get FREE admission. (fusion IT will be there!)

Mass. Production Coalition presents the Premiere of Knight and Day (filmed here in Massachusetts!) This fundraiser has SOLD OUT! WooHoo!

Saturday & Sunday, June 26th & 27th

All Day, both days. The world-famous Dov S-S Simens 2-Day Film School visits Boston. Let us know what you think.

NEXT WEEK

Monday, June 28th

6:30 – 8:00 PM Back Bay Creative Coworkers Meetup
Discuss plans for ka-POW-er (spaces) Back Bay – a planned Coworking space in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood – pool ideas and contacts, and make it a reality!

fusion IT clients and creative colleagues may be interested the the following events. Contact us (info in footer) or leave a comment to suggest other events which inspire, connect & equip creative businesses.

Wednesday June 16th,

10AM – 12PM Rule Learning Labs “HD-SLR Cameras”

6:30  - 9:00PM SMPTE-NE Presentation “3D – Shoot it, Watch it” at Rule. Registration CLOSED at 1PM, Monday, June 14th.

BIG week next week! – Forget about working!!!:
Tuesday June 22nd, 5 – 9PM Rule Boston Camera 1st Annual Tech Expo

Tuesday June 22nd, 6 – 9PM Pecha Kucha Boston 18 (a fusion IT favorite!)

Wednesday, June 23rd, 6 – 9PM Revolve Nation’s Boston Entrepreneur Group - Summer “Kick-Off” Event: Large Group Networking at The Greatest Bar

Thursday June 24th Ad Club of Boston presents The EDGE Conference: Branded in Boston.

Friday June 25th 1st Annual Boston SuperMeet! fusion IT is a Media Sponsor of this event. Click HERE to get FREE admission.

Friday June 25th Mass. Production Coalition presents the Premiere of Knight and Day (filmed here in Massachusetts!) This fundraiser is SOLD OUT! WooHoo!