AtkinsTechnicolour

Judging is now closed, the winner will be announced next Wednesday evening August 4th between 6-7pm. If you are an entrant, please join us at the winner’s drinks at AtkinsTechnicolour for the announcement.

August 10th 2010, full day AIPP workshop here at AtkinsTechnicolour.
To book, click here.

The true value of social media has clearly been realised on a personal level, it’s sheer popularity must mean there is something in it. Now we have scientific evidence to back this up.

Oxitocin is the hormone that both stimulates labour and milk production in the childbirth process, it is also responsible for the “bonding” process. That is the process where a mother and baby form an instant, deep connection. Further to this, scientist have been exploring Oxitocin’s influence in the social recognition process.

While the research is still in it’s infancy, there appears to be a link between the presence of Oxitocin, when in close contact with friends and loved ones, lower stress levels and feeling of contentment and affection.

And to top it all off, studies have shown levels of Oxitocin increase whether you are physically with your friends and loved ones, or you are interacting with them on-line using social networking.

So now we are beginning to understand that sharing time with people on-line is similar in emotional value to physically sharing their presence. Placing on my economic survival hat;  as businesses, can we make use of this?

Yes we can. Providing we as businesses are a part of our customers’ life in a valuable way.

I do not believe there is any value in using social networking unless you are prepared to strike up and maintain strong relationships with your clients. Merely broadcasting (at best, spamming at worst) to your clients will elicit response rates similar to direct mail (very low at best, black banned at worst).

The secret to making Facebook and Twitter work is to enhance your ‘word of mouth’ marketing, to help the fans of your business become true advocates, so they speak about you to their networks, broadening your reach.

So picture Twitter and Facebook like a big party where you can move around the room mingling with your friends. Twitter and Facebook keeps the party open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

You need to ask your business self, would you invite you to the party?

Paul Atkins

Link to article that prompted this post

High Falls Rochester - Kodak tower back right

Kodak invited me to attend their annual Prolab workshop in their Hometown of Rochester, New York, USA. The workshop was attended by 200 of Kodak’s professional photolab clients, some attendees were amongst the biggest labs in the world.

The workshop centered around Kodak’s lab software DP2, the sessions ran in three streams, basic, advanced and management. The sessions were ran by the programmers and tech support people from the DP2 team. Not a PR person in sight.

To my thinking, this is a pretty brave thing to do. Like any software, it cannot be perfect and it will attract crticism. So to run a show this way you would need to be confident of your product and people.

So the information we got was incredibly useful, the opportunity to have our questions asked by *the* guy (Tom Apeland) who invented the product was exciting. The risk Kodak took is a bit like marketing with social media, you know someone is going to say something bad about your company/product on your public blogs, but you know you have to be there, so you had better be watching and ready to respond, and hope your fans help out.

This workshop was a risk that really paid off. Well done Kodak. I will continue to be amazed at the depth of talent and foresightedness this company delivers.

Paul Atkins

(what is DP2? Kodak’s print software, more on this in a future post.)

9.30 am at AtkinsTechnicolour May 27th 2010.

Come in for a cuppa and a chat! All funds to the Cancer Council of SA

Mercury Megaloudis – Creating Award Winning Prints - The AIPP event set for Wednesday the 26th of May has moved from the Rob Roy hotel to AtkinsTechnicolour, 89 Fullarton Road Kent Town, bookings and registration are through Mercury’s website.

Seminar Wednesday will start at 9.30am, be there by 8.55am to get your place.

The Tuesday afternoon session for the AIPP is still on at the Rob Roy.

As a result of the seminar we ran earlier this month, I have prepared an information sheet to summarise my recommendations. Please read it and challenge the findings if you want to, the best ideas are well tested! Click here to view the PDF.

We are also stocking the Vantec Dual Hard Drive Docks and raw hard drive cases will be in stock in two weeks.

Enjoy!

Paul Atkins

Hurry up if you want to see this three times Master of Photography (AIPP) speak on the 11th of May. To book, call the lab on 08 8431 6755 or email.

Cost $65 for Students and members of the AIPP and AAPP, and $75 for non-members.

For more information, click here.

Proudly sponsored by Jorgensens Albums and AtkinsTechnicolour.

As a part of our commitment to helping photographers manage their workflow, we are stocking the Vantec Dual Hard Drive Dock.

The dock is designed to hold two SATA interface raw hard drives, either 2.5inch or 5.25inch drives. This is the most economical way to have an external hard drive.

The Vantec Drive Dock connects with USB2 or eSATA.

Cost $99.95

Order by emailing or visiting the lab.

Can you recover from this?

April 28th 2010, 6pm – 9pm (pizza included),

Paul Atkins will run a seminar on running a successful backup and archiving system.

Atkins started it’s digital services in 1994, and archiving was the problem encountered after 3 months accumulating digital files. We solved it in the 4th month.

2010 has bought some interesting new opportunities to solve the problem. Come along for a fun night of information and discussion.

You will leave with a solution.

Click here for more details.