Danny and I are in Germany at present, Cologne (Köln) to be specific, visiting the Photokina trade fair. It's been a whirlwind tour through Europe getting here. In 5 days we travelled through Las Angeles, London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne. What an incredible week of contrasts. The cities, especially Paris and Amsterdam, were incredible, so romantic with their old world charm and architecture, but with unfortunate modern contrasts. If Mc Donalds down the road from Notre Dame wasn't enough, how about the accommodation we have in Cologne? This is a table in the restaurant. The place is a haze of stale cigarette smoke and cooking oil, shelves adorned with stuffed toys and English country music. I'd never stay here again if it wasn't for the wonderful people and good food. No one here speaks a lick of English but somehow we manage because they're so nice. I guess that's why the restaurant was full of 'suits', people you would only see at the Stamford Plaza at home. I laughed when I went to the restaurant bathroom however, as it was so modern I thought I must have entered a neighboring building. Being someone that loves books, however, the greatest contrast was between the books I found at Notre Dame and the Louvre and the horrible, cheap, mass produced books being flogged by the truckload at Photokina. Amongst precious items like the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo the books were equally precious artefacts contain our history, our stories, our culture. You won't find cover designs like these on a Queensberry album, but you'll certainly see the same pride, sense of purpose and craftsmanship. At the end of the day it is the sharing and honouring of stories that is the goal. I won't include a photo of the "Photokina" books. Suffice to say most (not all) are tacky, cheap and don't respect any level of craftsmanship or longevity. In fact so little craftsmanship is involved, we sat today stunned as a demonstrator haphazardly assembled a book with one hand as he held his mobile phone in the other. I feel some excitement about these new books, as people are finally able to move their digital files off their hard drives onto paper so they can be appreciated. But important stories need to be honoured, treated with respect and enhanced through beautiful and timeless presentation, not jammed into the cheapest book available. An amazing week none the less, fascinating and inspiring. I love life's contrasts, it's a wonderful reminder that we are all different.

Ok ... Truth is, I'm not really sure what this is about. But I love the artistry in this sort of work ... powerful images and music, strangely moving in an odd sort of way. Hat tip to EpicGirl

I saw my blog traffic jump by a huge amount yesterday, with most traffic coming from Stumbleupon, and I wondered how I could check who had reviewed me, and what they had said. I found a webpage on Stumbleupon that links to this information. It doesn't seem to be directly accessible from your user account but I found part of the answer in this post. You need to build a URL using a base URL of:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=

plus the page URL, eg

http://stephenbaugh.com/2008/09/the-guy-that-turns-her-light-off/

This means the full URL would be

http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=http://stephenbaugh.com/2008/09/the-guy-that-turns-her-light-off/

This brings you to the referrer page on StumbleUpon, with the information you're looking for. Just click on the "reviewed by" link, shown as "2 reviews" in this picture. (click image to see full size). In an effort to make it even easier in the future I set up a script in my book marks. The javascript is:

javascript:void(location.href='http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url='+location.href)

Loaded in Safari like this (click image to see full size): This shows up in my browser as below, meaning I can check the StumbleUpon status of any page right from my browser window. UPDATE: Of course you could do what I did and change to Firefox, the Stumbledupon tools are amazing. I like the new Firefox, but miss Safari though

In business there are no magic bullets, but this idea is so powerful it certainly feels like magic. I ran into an old friend yesterday, and it reminded me of a series of seminars I ran a few years ago that contained a section on how to increase profits. Especially when times are tough, it's great to be able to break things down into some simple rules that allow you to know where to focus, so I'll share this very simple but powerful idea with you now. Gross Profit is calculated on an "averaged basis" as: (Total number of clients x Average number of visits per year x Average sale x Average margin) Let's say I have a small grocery store (simplified numbers for effect) with 200 clients who visit once a month. On average they spend $100 and I have a 15% margin on the items sold. From the above example ... Gross profit per year = 200 * 12 * $100 * 15% = $36k Now if I asked you to double your profits this year, you might look at me sideways and say that it's not possible. That's because many people think that to double your profits you need to double your sales ... It seems obvious from the calculation above? But the truth is that the compounding effect of changes in each of these numbers, even small ones, can have a dramatic impact on the bottom line. So if we are going to double our profits, we could do it like this... Grow the number of customers by 20% There are lots of ways to find new clients. In my case we start talking to our clients and ask them to "bring along a friend". Basically I encourage word of month promotion and 1 in 5 bring a new regular client? Now I have 240 clients. Get them to come back more often When we review our sales statistics we find that people are buying once a month. Due to our sales cycle we have people buying on the same day (eg 15th) each month. By changing it to a 4 week cycle we could get one more sale per year. Now our customers are purchasing 13 times a year. Spend more each time (15%) Our sales promotion now focuses on getting a little more in each shopping basket. We look at impulse purchases and slightly higher priced options. For example one pot of premium honey a month over winter purchased for its medicinal benefits would provide the required $15 increase. Now the average sale is $115. Increase margin to 20% This might look after itself, as the higher value options also have a higher margin. However we look at our purchasing and got an improved margin by buying in greater bulk, twisting suppliers' arms and reducing shipping and breakage costs. Now my numbers look like New Gross Profit = 240 * 13 * $115 * 20% = $72k Profit Doubled Ok, Ok ... I know this is over simplified, but I hope you can see that if you focus in these areas of your business, due to the compounding effect, a small increase in each can yield incredible improvements to the bottom line. The key to guaranteed success is to 'Keep it Simple' and focus on the cumulative effect of continuous improvement. Your thoughts? Have you seen this work in your business? Am I talking crap ... let me know below!

 Photo by Brett Harkness I just wrote about why I love photograph albums, but the story got a little long so I've edited it. I guess the truth is we love the industry, the books and just as importantly, we love design. Queensberry's love and focus on design is a story all by itself. Let's face it, though, some albums suck ... Sorry but they do. The book is cheap and plasticky, and no consideration is given to what photos are included. A great album is so much more. I'm not trying to turn this into a shameless plug, and I know quality is subjective, but I believe we produce the world's finest albums. From a design perspective we are the "bride's advocate" and although it's a little overstated, our goal is for the bride to have an experience seeing her album for the first time that in some ways is better than the one she had on the day. What do I mean by that? You know what it's like ... she gets stressed ... there are lots of things she doesn't get to see and experience ... and of course on the day she doesn't see herself as others see her. It's hard to explain, but the experience of enjoying an album starts before you even open the cover ... It is a beautiful but understated book that piques a person's curiosity. A book whose design is in line with today's taste but equally comfortable with tomorrow's. The real experience, however, is in the pages of the book. The photographer starts by skilfully capturing the events of the day, the spirit of the people involved, the important details as they unfold. It's impossible to describe the total effect, you need to hold a book in your hands to know exactly what I am describing, but when it's done properly the signs are very obvious ... smiles, tears, laughter and people pointing dumb struck as they pore over their images. Here are a few examples (images and albums) by other photographers: - Harvest Colours - Red and White all over - Lyttleton Grunge