
Regrettably, I am writing this, my only blog entry for 2013 , as simply a singular year end review.
I had hoped to provide more of a consistent series of writings on my events this year but it turns out that my schedule did not permit me much of a chance to do such entries as I had expected to do. This was a busy year with a lot of time spent on the road. Next year promises to be the same. I went many different places throughout 2013 from Orlando in March to Munich in August. I worked in such cities as Amsterdam and Detroit, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Toronto, Houston, Newport Beach, San Jose, Denver and Cincinnati.
I worked on numerous conferences and meetings in Chicago as well. I covered medical events such as the EASL in April in Europe and The Illinois Association Of School Boards just a two weeks ago in Chicago.
I covered airport industry events and technology conferences as well as medical and academic events. I learned about LED lighting and fire prevention techniques as well as European environmental history and current practices for water quality safeguarding of municipal facilities. I learned about B2B advertising best practices and USA-Canadian border security relations. It was a fascinating year of meetings and I met people from all over the world.
I am grateful to all my clients both new and old for their continued use of my services. I have never expected or claimed to be something other than what I am ; a practitioner of a quality “boutique ” based service for the meetings industry. I offer personalized and quality conscious images for small and medium (15’000 or so) conference and trade show industry events. That is more than enough for me.
I now have two to three associates working for me that process and maintain my image production because I have often have no time to process and edit the images I produce while on assignment. One of these associates also photographs my assignments when I am double-booked for dates throughout the year ; he now understands my aesthetics and my approach to producing the best images for my client’s marketing and archival needs.
I still have difficulties maintaining and organizing my office since my office manager is only able to come sporadically to help. Still, the expansion of my business has meant more opportunities in many instances. I am also going to start working once again with video in a limited capacity. I was training to be a filmmaker in my college days but eventually gave that work up because I was losing interest in the industry as a profession . These days videography is a part of social media and I find that with current camera technology there are certain circumstances that will allow me to work independently with much greater fluidity than a filmmaker was able to obtain in the past. Further developments and samples will be presented in my blog next year.
Perhaps the best way to end my blog at this time is to provide a wonderful quote.
And like all sayings, these are doorways into the mind’s eye, where each of us must find ourselves… hoping for the best but being willing to accept something far less in the course of our daily lives.
Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.
Thomas Merton