No, I'm not dead.

Although if I pull another "let's work until midnight again all week shindig, it's gonna feel like it. It's not the late nights that are so painful. It's the mornings.

I'm the tech guy behind two financial newsletters http://oilandgas-investments.com/ and Midasletter http://www.midasletter.com/. The writers cover energy and mining stocks in the North American junior markets, respectively.  In case you haven't noticed, oil and gas and other commodities have been going like stink. Hence the late nights.

Let's move on:

Copperleaf Technologies http://www.copperleafgroup.com/about_team.aspx is still going strong. I have to say this: How come Stan always poses for the exec pix with a golf shirt? I think he wore a golf shirt for the exec VP picture with Creo too. All these years and he can't afford a sports jacket? The mind boggles.

Dave K. http://www.davekauffman.ca/ and metabadge. Who remembers metabadge? That's the first thing I thought of when I found he's working for Tantalus http://www.tantalus.com/index.php

Bob C. is over at Sophos http://www.sophos.com/ and from what I heard, he has a whackload of ex-Prinergy developers working with him.

It's a funny thing,  I see ex-Creoites everywhere. Last week the wife of Will V. was in the neighbourhood, looking for a house to buy so they could be closer to their Mom.

AJ. L. has a kid in the same karate class as my youngest boy.

Deborah Holowka, previously Global Business Process Improvement Leader at Kodak is an artist who paints oil.  Yeah, I'm not kidding check our her site http://www.danusha.ca/.

Amos is my friend! Well okay he accepted my invitation at Linkedin to be his friend. And so what if he has more than 500 connections on Linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/in/amosmichelson, any day now I expect a phone call and an invite to another dinner with him at Seasons Restaurant.

Gordon Pritchard is still blogging away http://qualityinprint.blogspot.com/

Some people, amazingly, are still working at Kodak. I won't name them.

I used to talk about Creo to people who never worked there until finally some friends started to look at me funny and say "dude, you don't work there anymore, you haven't worked there for years, you should move on."

So I did. So all we all did. But last week I had a drink (okay drinks) with a friend I've known since university. He's been at the same organization for close to 20 years. He's  hated his job for more than 10. Truly, honestly, loathed his work environment and the people around him. He more than hates his job. He hates the very idea of  "working:"The very thought of joining a group and trying to create something.

I think at some point in the past I tried to tell him it didn't have to be like that. A  group of people could do things differently and do wonderful things working together. But I don't think he understood or maybe he just didn't believe it. Maybe you had to be there.

credo ut intelligam

Man, I need one of these...

Yes, I do have a lot of interesting blog ideas. Yes, I do have thought-provoking writings to share with my beloved followers, if they still exist.

What I don't have is time. Like today I'm supposed to tweaking the data feeds for one news aggregator site and running landing page analysis on another. Plus the half-dozen other "action-items" on my "things-to-do" list.

Well, I guess that's a good thing. But it's seem like you are always either hiking through a desert or trying to drink from a firehose, isn't it?

The first company Christmas parties I attended were held by a grocery store chain. I worked my way through university stocking shelves at night for four years (I don't recommend doing that, it was murder on the gradepoint average, as I had a tendency to fall asleep in the lectures).

Groceries guys are smart when it comes to providing for food and other little logistical details. The Christmas organizing party got a cut from the pop machines and other vending machines in the employee staff room so they were able to offer subsidized tickets and nice door prizes.

When I went into the prepress business, I first worked a number of years at Elty Publications, which puts out the Real Estate Weekly. In the years before the internet, they did boffo business. They were REALLY tight with wages but they held a nice Christmas party and didn't charge for tickets, so I gotta give the owner points for that (even though some friends and myself  really busted his chops when we tried to organize an union there back in the mid-nineties. Ah, fun times.)

Spent a few years in the service bureau business, when a guy could buy an imagesetter and pay $2.00 for a sheet of film, rip some data on it, and then sell it on the street for $15.00. The company was called Laser's Edge and run by a couple of pretty good guys. They had some great parties, one on a cruise boat with an outstanding buffet. They traded some prepress work for it. Again, pretty sharp negotiating.

For one year I worked at a reprographic company run by a couple of owners who were desperately trying to sell the business and it showed. The Christmas dinner was brutal, tickets were reasonably priced but the catering was awful. I remember the peas were canned and quite possibly the turkey was boiled. You could tell that the company hadn't put a single dime into the Christmas party.

Onward to Creo, which became famous in Vancouver for their Christmas parties. I mean, they bordered on  being decadent. In later years, Amos got some flack for throwing such elaborate parties but let me tell you, after one of those bashes, you would run through a wall for that company. Plus too, people forget that Creo was one of the largest hi-tech employers in BC during the glory years,  so they had huge pricing power.

In the last year I worked at Creo, they cancelled the Christmas party, that's when the Burton guy was trying to do a hostile takeover and basically fire everybody. What a scrooge.

As a contractor/consultant, during the mid-00's, I didn't get invited to any Christmas parties, which didn't exactly upset me. I do remember one company where it was known that the owners were regular church-goers and they didn't throw Christmas parties for their staff. I was a bit scandalized by that.

I mean, heaven know I'm not a poster boy for Christianity, especially when a piece of software doesn't work and yet again I'm slowly going nuts in a corner of the room, whispering f-bombs and thinking thoughts of  murder and mayhem against the company that released the piece of garbage that is making my life a purgatory. Hey, I gotta go to church. To beg forgiveness. Yet again.

But gees, no Christmas party whatsoever? There ought to  be a rule if you are a company owner and you go to church you should compelled to throw a Christmas party, if only so the rest of us Christians are not embarrassed by such cheapness.  Don't make me quote the Bible on this.

Every once in awhile, I get an email message or a linkedin invitation from an old acquaintance or even just somebody who has read my blog and I get asked one or more of the following questions:
1. What is it like being a professional blogger?
2. Can you make money blogging?
3. Can you make a living as a professional blogger?
4. How do you start?

So in this post I'm going to answer this questions so that I can just link to this post everytime somebody emails me with inquires about the life of a blogger. So here goes...
1. What it's like being a professional blogger?
To tell the truth, the professional code of conduct for being a blogger is a bit of drag sometimes. Like always sitting in front of your computer wearing nothing but your underwear. It gets tedious. Somedays I think to myself "Ahhhhhh, what would I give, just to once again wear a nice comfortable suit, blazer, cuff link and all"
Plus, when you are married, groupies are always a problem. Temptation, temptation. Thankfully, I've been able to resist so far.
2. Can you make money as a blogger?
Yes. You can make good money. Lots of people make great money.
3. Can you make a living as a professional blogger?
Yes, you can, but before you run off and open a Blogger account and tell the world what you had for dinner last night, you should be told that 1) Most blogs don't make any money 2) It takes years for a blog to become profitable (with a few exceptions).
Take this blog for example. I make anywhere from one to two hundred bucks a month off it. Of course, I spend anywhere from 5 to 15 hours a month posting to it, so let's say I'm making $12-15 hours doing prepress pilgrim. And I have been posting to this blog for more than two years. Now why does this suck as a money-maker? Because I didn't do a competent job of market research. Heck, I didn't do ANY market research. I have just been doin' prepress for more than 15 years and heck, that's what I'll blog on.
Now, this is not really a big secret, but I'll tell you anyway, there's no money in prepress and hasn't been for years. I mean, jees, most people that read my blog are probably more interested in knowing if they are going to keep their job over the next six months then whipping out the old wallet and buying the latest and greatest widget-whatever through one of my affiliate links. Now, if two years ago I had started blogging about anti-aging strategies or personal health issues, I would be making a LOT more than two hundred bucks a month blogging. Those niches are so hot that the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) along with Google is launching lawsuits against fake blogs (or "flogs").
4. How do you start?
Well, that's dead easy. Open up an account at either Blogger or WordPress or Live Journal and start typing away. A far more important question to ask yourself is why do you want to be a blogger?
Are you trying to make money (see answer to #3)?
Do you have a burning desire to write about something?
Do you need a marketing vehicle for yourself?
Do you need to vent?
In my case, it was a combination of all of the above, although you may find it interesting to note that making money off this blog is becoming less important over the years. Bloggers who have been doing it for more than a couple of years will tell you that having a good marketing vehicle like a blog is actually more valuable than trying to make money off it. That is to say, because you are a blogger, you are offered far more opportunities than if you are Joe Schlub with the bullet point resume. No really, unless you are applying for a government job, if somebody says "send me your resume" well you might as well just forget about it.
Again, I can only speak from my own experience. Like right now I'm busting butt on a project with good potential in between being a stay-at-home Dad and there's NO WAY I would have had this opportunity without blogging for a couple of years. Like the client totally understands that I stay at home with the kids and we are in a con-call and there's a Dora the Explorer video playing in the background, that's cool.
Mind you, if any of you guys think this is a dream job, just remember that if the kids going crazy every odd day (it happens) that just means I have to stay up until midnight catching up. But hey, if I think I'm hard done-by, I just think what would have happened if I had picked the "safe" route back to reemployment and taken some technical course to retrain myself like... the PMI certification (Project Manager Institute). Oh man, tons of those guys in the city looking for work.
Anyhow, gotta go. Boatloads of work to do. I'm really glad that Blenz opened up this nice coffee shop on Main close to where I lived. The seats with the nice cushions are outstanding.

Jeff Lazarus points to a tweet by the Dr. Joe Webb saying that the printing industry (in North America I assume) has lost 78,900 workers in the last 12 months, 4900 in the last 30 days.
Sorry I looked for the original source on the Whattheythink web site but didn't find. But Webb is a reliable authority (as opposed to other bloggers like yours truly that don't exactly make things up but are too tired at night to do full-scale fact checking).
Note that's for printing, not for prepress. And honestly, printing covers a WIDE variety of jobs. You've got the counter people pushing business cards at Walmart, and the prepress workflow integrators putting in a VLF with fully digital workflow at a book printer: Who lost their job?
Mind you our little corner of the world is smaller than you think. How many of those printing jobs were in the prepress area? Perhaps not that many. I'm also curious to see how prepress can get downsized anymore. I can't speak for all of North America, but I know of a few shops in Vancouver where prepress is down to.... one person. So if that person calls in sick, there are no plates (unless somebody has been cross-trained). If that person wants to go on vacation, then they have to bring in somebody.
Interesting times. Yes, the company is leaner and meaner but also more fragile. I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing media articles about "the shortage of skilled workers in prepress."

Interesting thread on Slashdot on why developers get fired and what to do about it.
Substitute "prepress technicians" for developers.

Now, before I go any further, I should share a summary of an email sent to me and my response to it. A fellow was (is) looking for work in prepress and came across my blog and was intrigued at a former prepress specialist turned blogger and asked how I made the transition. My short sweet answer?

Continual unemployment (cue laugh track).

So maybe I'm not the best guy to give career advice or tips on how to find a job. But what the hey, it's my blog and I'm sure you've had a gutfull of digging through the crap at monster.com and  some comic relief is in order. And we aim to please. So here goes.

Now forget what is hot in prepress. That was just a teaser title. Apparently what's hot in prepress and has been hot in prepress in years is that boat-anchor  of a beast called inkjet and you want to stay as far away from a a shop buying inkjet presses as you can. You don't want what is hot, you want to be with a shop that is making money. Shops that make money tend to want to hire people, I have discovered this great secret in my twenty years in the workforce. So let's focus on the shops that make money.

Packaging printers are still making the coin. Not that they would tell you that. The average commercial printer is pretty tight-lipped about cash flow but put him next to a packaging printer and he would look as chatty as Paula Abdul. Trust me on this, the packaging guys are still bankin' and the prepress work in packaging is not going to be shipped out to the drones in Kinko's anytime soon. The tool of choice in packaging is either Artpro or Prinergy Powerpack (other vendors in the packaging biz, feel free to plug your wares in the comments section). If you want to check out what packaging guys like to talk about, check out converting magazine.

Okay, you wanna stay in commercial? Look for high-end printers. Not the guy who think 175 lpi is high class and 150 lpi is "good enough." Jeepers, those guys are getting thrown under the steamroller every day. Look for guys who are doing lenticular and even trying spotless. Because if they are trying (or doing) funky stuff like that, then they have customers who are paying for it.

Lastly, what's going to be big in the next decade? Well, if they work out all the bugs, then OLED printing is going to be huge. I mean, right now, they are putting video screens in magazines, so don't think there isn't a market for that.

Rick Turner from Delarue sent in a link from the US department of stats showing that employment in prepress is set to decline 16 percent from 2006 to 2016, or from 119,000 workers down to 100,000. That's a nice even number, by the way.

Personally, after reading the beginning of  The World is Flat, A Brief History of the 21st Century (by Thomas L. Friedman), you have to wonder if the government guys are a tad optimistic. At the beginning of Friedman's book, he chronicles his visit to India and visits several call and remote support centres, and a gives a glowing account of their capabilities.

Also, ever hear of Chennai, India? If you want to outsource your desktop publishing, then that's the Indian city you want to go to.

Lastly, I remember a tour of duty I did for Creo Australia waaaay back in early 2001. Before moving the office to Hong Kong, Creo did sales for all of Asia out of Sydney. The main sales guy there was a guy by the name of Garron Helman. He told great stories of pushing CTP and Prinergy workflow out in China and India. Big sales, in cities that I had never even heard the names of.

(Well, the best part of his stories were actually the bits about his stomach. You see in India you had to worry about the food and in China you had to worry about the booze. Especially if you were trying to close a deal in an industrial area and not a touristy spot. But I digress.)

It is a bit of mystery as to why an outsourcing firm specializing in running prepress operations remotely hasn't made a splash yet. How hard is it to run a Prinergy system remotely? Gees, how hard is it, with rules-based-automation, to run a Prinergy system period?

I'm trying to think: Yeah, you can't unjam the photocopier remotely, which was the most time-consuming task at my last Prinergy gig. And somebody had to feed in rolls of paper for the wide-format Epson. Also, you need somebody to load the plates.

But definitely, for file prep, it could be done remotely. No problem.

About a couple of weeks ago I reported the news that Stan Coleman, formerly of the Prinergy team, left Kodak to join Copperleaf technologies. Yesterday I got a friendly ping from Daryl Spencer, COO of Copperleaf, who gave me a heads-up on a Copperleaf press release.

In case you are too lazy to click, Judi Hess, formerly of Kodak, has joined Copperleaf as CEO. So let's start to parse these bits of data together and form a narrative, shall we?

You've got Daryl, ex-Creo. Former project manager brought aboard in Creo during the 1990s when the company was in start-up mode. Led the Renaissance scanner team and incidentally the copydot toolkit team which were both successful product launches . And now you got Judi, who built up the Creo software group into a powerhouse during the '00s. Or to summarize, she has launched products which have made money too. Oh, and let's not forget Stan, shall we?

All the executives above have been comfortable (and have garnered success) managing teams of more than 50. But wait, Copperleaf itself has less than 50 employees: Are we seeing a case of mass-slumming by ex-Creoites? Let us turn to the press release for more clues.

"CopperLeaf has pioneered a new business planning process called asset investment planning (AIP), and our solutions provide value to asset-based businesses around the world," says Lynn Casey. "We are facing a massive growth opportunity and need the expertise of an execution master like Judi to take the next big step in our evolution.

(Text bolded  by me)

Oh look, by the way, they're hiring.

Unemployment rate in the US moved up to 9.5% in June. It's also 9.5% in the Euro-zone.

Okay, okay, so what is the unemployment rate for us prepress folk? You know, the geeks with high technical skills in Mac, Windows, knowledge of Adobe Creative suite, networking (not that you need to be brain surgeon to do that nowadays) and maybe even a color theory and imposition knowledge?

Well, I dug up some interesting stats for US employment of prepress workers here, but it's from May 2008. Now, it tells us that Wisconsin is a big employer of prepress (makes sense, as Quad is based out of Wisconsin). From May 2008 to May 2009 the unemployment rate in Wisconsin  shot up from 4.4%  to 8.9%. You have to think that non-governmental workers (i.e. people like prepress specialists) are heavily weighted in the layoffs.

I found another  info page on prepress employment data from the Australian government. Interestingly, the number of jobs in prepress has shrunk from 11300 (1996) to 5600 (2008). They must get huge competition from Asian countries.

Nothing really recent and specific to prepress. My gut feeling is that the decline in employment for prepress workers has accelerated in North America, Europe, and Australia and possibly held steady in the Asian countries especially China. Back in the early 2000s China made HUGE purchases of CTP and modern workflow products, and the cost of workers there is so cheap, why bother laying them off?

So let's see, the last reliable numbers on employment prepress were as follows: 65000 in US and 5300 in Australia. That was before the economic crisis really hit. Let's say Canada has 6000 prepress workers. That's really interesting, that is roughly equivalent to the number of people employed by GM and Chrysler in North America. And I would say the business struggles of the automobile industry and the commercial print industry are very similar.

Unemployment rate for prepress 25%+. Yeah, I can't prove it: But what's a blog for, if not to make unproven assertions?