The other day I read an article titled: “Retweets becoming digital version of autographs”. Being a collector for years of sports memorabilia (hopefully to put in my sports bar one day), I was trying to figure out how the new “digital autographs” will work and what their value is.

Read article here: http://tinyurl.com/6n667yy

Great memories are attached to many of the autographs I acquired over the years mostly, at games with my kids or charity events. None of those I would give up for a retweet.

I am sure some entrepreneurial person will come up with a way to catalogue and preserve the retweets but so what. Can’t look at them, nor display them.

Same holds true for books. My 9 year old daughter published a great hardback book that she wrote and illustrated, autographing it and giving it to me for father’s day.  This is certainly one my most prized possessions.  On the other hand she recently found a kids program called Storybird, wrote another book and sent me the link. (Great program for kids)  http://tinyurl.com/6t6z52g

I of course loved it, but it can’t replace the autographed hardback in my office.

Maybe I can have a digital display in my sports bar with all the retweets I don’t have and will not collect.

Have we gone too digital?

At a Christmas party I attended last weekend a discussion evolved about the “curse” of Google and the accessibility of information children have today. Being a “glass half full” person my position quickly morphed into supporting the availability of information and the fact that like anything, it can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how one uses it.

In 1897 a little girl named, Virginia O’Hanlon wrote the following letter to the New York Sun newspaper.

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Little Virginia did not have Google, or television for that matter. The newspaper was “the” source of information for current events, in fact commercial radio did not become available until the 1920’s.

The famous reply, written by Francis P. Church of the Sun started like this: “Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age.” (Read the rest of the reply at http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/ )

But have we all become affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age?

A simple Google search asking the question “Is Santa Claus real?” generated 33,400,000 hits and the first entry is a video of Santa coming down the chimney: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp7zWs8fHeE

In fact there are more entries validating the existence of Santa than not. (At least in the first 4-5 pages) So what does that say about technology and information?

• Information is exactly that, information, not necessarily fact
• One must interpret, analyze and draw conclusions based on information
• All conclusions are not created equal
• Scepticism in a sceptical age can be a blessing or a curse. Depends on you.

My best to all for a Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) and a prosperous 2012.

How long is a lifetime? Never gave it much thought until I heard the term “lifetime revenue” at a Pitney Bowes Users Conference. The spirit of the conversation focused on loyalty driven by great products and great service, boosting lifetime revenue. And ideally, that certainly is the case.

Not quite sure why the term is intriguing to me, as it is not the first time I have heard it.

However, is it loyalty or indifference that keeps us doing business with someone or something else?

A couple examples: (Just a few)

• I have been a cardholder for “x” company since 1988. I pay an annual fee and quite frankly I am not overly satisfied with the company, the benefits or how they handled things during the credit crunch. Some of the perks are beneficial, many I do not use. They are quick telling me when new benefits are added and but do a bad job, when benefits are eliminated. Nothing worse showing up at an airline club and being turned away. But I still carry their card and pay the annual fee.

• My cell phone provider. Cheaper plans are available. Don’t like their changes regarding data usage, but I am grandfathered in, so really was not affected. I am upset over their change in policy for rollover minutes. I have called their customer service line and they have been more than happy crediting disputed (and even non-disputed) amounts and even gave me back my roll over minutes. Are they looking at “lifetime revenue” when they do this? It’s kind of like golf, one good shot and you are back. Kudos to their customer service dept.

• A second cardholder, where I have banked for almost 20 years, found it beneficial to cutmy credit limit by 70% during the credit crunch despite charging and paying off large amounts of merchandise or services on time and in 90 days or less. They also saw fit to raise my interest rate by 9%. The interest rate they charge on the card used to be called “loan sharking” when I was younger. They did raise my credit limit again, as a “valued customer”.

No indifference here. Still carry their card. Pay no annual fee (yet) and I use it once a month to buy Starbucks coffee. The minute they charge me an annual fee, I cancel the card.

• They say the hardest things to find are a good accountant, an honest lawyer and a honest mechanic. My mechanic is the best. He is honest and I trust him. Won’t fix things that don’t need to be fixed. Recommends OEM, refurbished or used parts, when it makes sense and there are never any surprises when I go and pick up my car. Not expensive, but not cheap either. He is young and I would never think about changing.

So what does drive “lifetime revenue”? The product, service, ethics, a great customer service organization or trust? Or is it all of the above?

In many of my previous blogs I have spoken about looking at new print applications, thinking out of the box and finding applications that are value driven and demand a higher price.

The  ultimate print application

A few days ago while I was preparing to fly from Vancouver back to Tampa I ventured into the hotel business center to print my boarding pass. I have done it dozens of times across the country and never really thought about paying some fee for using the business center as it saves me time and for me it is a real value proposition.

Swiped my card, logged on, when through the checkout procedure and then clicked “print boarding pass”.

Then why did they ask me if I wanted to print it?

I immediately got the following message, nicely formatted, suitable for print, on the screen:  “This is not a boarding pass. You will need to complete your check in at the airport kiosk.” I printed the page just so I would get something for my money.

I hit continue to log off and then got the message “Would you like to print a receipt?”  I could not help but start laughing. Should I print it and cut my cost to $1.50 a page?  Or stand pat?  Final cost $3.36 with tax.

I don’t want to hear “there is no money in print”.  It is all about value added applications 🙂

A few years ago I was writing an article on the document industry. As I sat in my office my daughter, who was about six at that time, asked me what I was doing. When I told her that I was writing something for a magazine about the document industry, she asked me what a document was.

It’s funny, but until that moment I really did not give much thought to it, but with all that was happening with technology did we really know what our industry defines as a document?

I  quickly gathered a few items, a CD, magazine, newspaper, an old  spreadsheet and a picture and then asked her “what do you think is a document?”  She gazed at the items for a few seconds and pointed to the spreadsheet, with a big smile on her face, proclaiming “that one!”

When I asked her why, she replied “That is a CD, that is a magazine, a newspaper and a picture, and I didn’t know what to call that” pointing to the spreadsheet.

Made me smile, and think at the same time “what really is a document”?  That was three years ago. Well, I began my book “The Future of the Document Industry” and the definition is paramount to the content of the book, so I needed to give it another go.

I decided the best place to start is looking it up in the dictionary, which in itself is an interesting exercise. I consulted the 1913 webster dictionary. I thought I would read the classic definition of a “paper document” but Mr. Webster was actually pretty smart leaving open the doors for the future. Interesting was the use of the phrase “or other instrument conveying information in the case;”

Websters 1913 dictionary:

doc´u`ment  –  Pronunciation: dǒk´ũ`ment  An original or official paper relied upon as the basis, proof, or support of anything else; – in its most extended sense, including any writing, book, or other instrument conveying information in the case; any material substance on which the thoughts of men are represented by any species of conventional mark or symbol.

Saint Luke . . . collected them from such documents and testimonies as he . . . judged to be authentic

I then proceeded to a more contemporary source, the WordNet dictionary. A bit more progressive, but still limited. (Not as good as Webster in my opinion)

WordNet Dictionary

Document – writing that provides information especially official nature, anything serving as a representation of a person’s thinking by means of symbolic marks, a written account of ownership or obligation, computer science) a computer file that contains text (and possibly formatting instructions) using 7-bit ASCII characters.

Then I ventured to the “hip” up to date Wikipedia …. And really was disappointed

Wikipedia  

document is a work of non-fiction writing intended to store and communicate information, thus acting as a recording. Documents are often the focus and concern of business administration and government administration. The word is also used as a verb as “documenting” describes the process of making a document.

The term document may be applied to any discrete representation of meaning, but usually it refers to something physical like one or more printed pages, or to a “virtual” document in electronic (digital) format

Technology and changes in human behavior have re-defined what a document is and I believe conventional sources do not capture the changes our industry has undergone. And according to Skip, the dictionary, I define it as:

A document is anything that contains and/or conveys data, facts, thoughts, images or ideas using any media including but not limited to: paper, pictures, video, audio, touch or smell.

What is your definition of a document?