Our Home is for Sale

1420 Parkmont Drive
Roswell, Georgia 30076

Price $158,000

• Foyer with Coat Closet Welcomes Your Guests
• Dining Room is Open to Living Room
• Cheerful Kitchen Views Family Room w/Fireplace
• Breakfast Area with Sliding Door to Back Yard
• Inviting Master Bedroom Features Built-In Desk/Vanity, Walk-In Closet & Private Bath with Shower
• Three Additional bedrooms, also on Upper Level
• Laminate floors
• Full Bath Off Hall w/Ceramic Tile Floor
• Laundry Closet Conveniently Located Off Kitchen
• Double Garage with Electronic Door
• Low Maintenance Aluminum Siding
• Backyard Fenced For Safety of Pets/Kids
• Energy Efficient Thermal Pane Windows
• Storm Door on Front Entry
• Sealed Burner Gas Range
• Trane Air Conditioning Unit
• New energy efficient Hot Water heater
  
• New Furnace & Evaporator core
• New attic stairs
• Master bath shower new
  
• ADT Security System
• Terminix Termite Plan
  

The Vendor Client relationship - in real world situations

I had to post this one after I saw it. It reminds me of some people's perspective on hiring photographers.

I believe all artists need to see this, but internalize this feeling and then think of new ways to communicate their prices.

Learn to stay firm on your price. Just because the client thinks the price should be lower or even for free doesn't mean you have to honor that request. 

Sights in the past week

Fayetteville, North Carolina Eiffel Tower An 80-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower marks the corner of two Fayetteville streets where Bordeaux Shopping Center is located. The tower is 1/12th the scale of the original in Paris, France. I photographed this out of my car window driving by on Thursday while I was in town for a photo shoot.

With its dedication and opening in 1991, the Fuller E. Callaway, Jr. Manufacturing Research Center building became one of the foremost facilities for manufacturing research and technological innovation in the country. Designed and built to accommodate and readily adapt to the vital research agendas facing both the manufacturing industry and academia, the 120,000-square-foot building maintains state-of-the-art laboratory facilities that support research, education, and technology transfer.

I was there on Friday photographing a researchers 3-D injet printer head.


This is an array of 400 nozzles for a 3-D print head for use in dental applications which I photographed on Friday.

Social Networking

The World Wide Web was born in 1993. Websites began. Connecting to the world was no longer just through email. You could publish photos on the web and put up storefront businesses. This was the beginning of the .com era.

In 1994 podcast took hold. A Podcast is a series of digital media files, usually digital, audio or video that is made available for download via web syndication.

In 1997 the weblog was introduced. It simplified creating a website and helped people publish material in a user-friendly matter. By 1999 the name was shortened to blog. The ability of most anyone to have a website was now so easy that the web exploded with blogs.

On October 28, 2003 Mark Zuckerberg, while a sophomore at Harvard, concocted Facemash. This became Facebook. The concept of Facebook is you invite friends to see your blog and you control who sees your material.

Twitter entered the scene in 2006 as a microblog. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user's profile page. They are delivered to other users (called followers) who have subscribed. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. The difference between a Facebook and a Twitter page is one is exclusive and the other by default inclusive.

About ten years ago, Donald O. Clifton led a team of scientists at Gallup to begin a dialogue on what is right with people. In 2001 they published the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment that, after taking the test, a person lists the top five talents/strengths they possessed out of a possible thirty-four categories. The difference with this assessment tool is its emphasis on people learning to play to their strengths rather than concentrating on their weaknesses.

In 2007, Tom Rath, one of Clifton’s team, updated the assessment and wrote Strength Finder 2.0. You can find out about it at www.StrengthsFinder.com.

In 2008 Seth Godin published Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. Godin has written about being a change agent in previous books like Purple Cow and The Dip. In his book Tribes, Godin helps us understand how all this technology of websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter are places where leaders can rise up if they are willing to lead. Good leaders create Raving Fans. Ken Blanchard the author of the popular management book The One Minute Manager also wrote the book Raving Fans.

Godin talks about how it is easier today, because of the web, to find others who think like you. We can build upon these strong connections with others. Godin takes the concepts of Strengths Finder (of playing to your strengths) to finding your niche by doing so your fans will find you. This group is what Godin calls a tribe.

A CROWD has many weak connections between people. TRIBES have strong connections. Organizations that play to the Tribe rather than the crowd will create Raving Fans according to Godin.

Godin talks about leveraging all these tools of blogs, websites, Facebook and Twitter. He gives an example of how Scott Beale, owner of Laughing Squid, uses all these tools and more to market. Beale was able to leverage his tribe when at a conference in 2008 “… he got tired of waiting to get into the Google party. He found a deserted bar down the street, grabbed some tables in the back and fired up his cell phone. Using Twitter, he announced: ‘Alta Vista Party at Ginger Man.’ Within a few minutes eight people showed up, then it was fifty. Soon there was a line out the door.”

Godin explains how Beale didn’t just sign-up with Twitter, tweet a message and the party began. The party took four years of marketing using the tools and by having a following he was then able to leverage this Tribe of his into a spontaneous event.

A few of my friends use the social networking tools to create workshops, sell their self-published books and many other ways of connecting with their tribes.

Networking was around long before the computer. Those people who understand how to connect with others have always done well in business.

Today you can build a tribe for almost nothing compared to the days before the computer. Social networks are free to join. They can connect you to the world. Marketing 101 teaches that if you talk to one thousand people only about one hundred will be interested in your idea. Of those one hundred only ten will buy.

The marketing challenge has always been how to reach enough people to connect with those who will buy.

One more aspect of connecting with your audience is getting your name in front of the repeatedly; usually six to eight times before the deal is sealed.

The web can connect you with the world. The web allows repeated connections via email, tweeting, blogging and inviting people to join your exclusive club.

One last observation - people are tuning in more to things like Youtube and HuLu than going to places with nothing but text. The problem with Youtube is there is a lot of junk there. So while it is visual it is also mostly amateur. Hulu is all about quality video. The difference is clear, advertisers are lining up to advertise on Hulu and Youtube doesn’t compare.

Today those who will brand themselves the best will no longer accept amateur communications - they hire professionals to help shape their message.

Give me a call and I’m eager to help you tell your story to your tribe.

Chick-fil-A Headquarters

When I visit Chick-fil-A, sitting on a bench is Truett Cathy greeting me each time I arrive.


Walking from the parking garage to the Corporate Headquarters is a beautiful waterfall. It is hard not to stop and just enjoy this for your day.

Swim Team has begun

The Roswell Rapids, my daughter's swim team, had their practice meet tonight. Parents practiced their volunteer roles before the actual match next week.


The kids got used to the water. Today we were getting close to a record low for Atlanta at 47 degrees this morning. A little chilly for everyone tonight. It was in the 60s by the end of the practice.

With a point-n-shoot? You have got to be kidding.

This is taken with the camera on the widest zoom, which is quivilant to a 28mm 35mm.


This is taken with the camera zoomed 10x or about 280mm.


What is unusual is the camera has a 40x digital zoom which doesn't change the megapixel output. This is the same pixel size as the other images. Incredibly, this is shot at f/4.9 and 1120mm.

Making of Family Photo in 2009

Chelle's 10th Birthday

Spring 2006 Family Photos

Spring 2007

What I do best

Time-Slicing/ Day-Parting

Chick-fil-A taps into it's Raving Fan base to create a fund raiser for it's WinShape Foundation. They can do this because they have learned how to be involved in invents that activate. This is quite different than most other advertisers where they are more like the wall paper for an event.

Tom Kennedy, former multimedia director for the WashingtonPost.com gave a talk to the Atlanta ASMP group. One of his slides during his presentation intrigued me about how we use media throughout the day. Tom's List for interaction with media through a day for people:

• Commuting - Podcasts, iPhones, Radio
• Work Hours - Email Alerts, SMS, Tweets
• Lunch Hours/Office Breaks - Websites
• Daily Living Tasks - SMS, Tweets, IM’s, Drive-By Media
• Home Leisure Time - Web, TV, Radio, iPods, iPhone

What he was pointing out is people will use a media often based on the time allotment. When one is riding a train, sitting at an airport or taking a bus they are more likely to get their messages through their phone. It maybe a phone which allows for surfing the web like the iPhone or Blackberry, so for the communicator they need to be aware of how their message is being formatted.

During work hours people cannot always surf the web, so they will allow for short messaging through email, tweets and even SMS (Social Media Sites).

What I was watching and coming to understand that for those of us who thought we were current using email and had a website, most of the audience wasn't being engaged by us.

This past February was a milestone for SMS. Now, more people are communicating through Social Media than with email.

For those of us who are communicators, we need to be aware of how an audience gets their information. It is easier to find the audience than to have the audience find you. We often call this pushing our message.

I am excited to help Chick-fil-A visually engage it's base. I am seeing how operators (franchise owners) use texting, email, Twitter, FaceBook, Websites, Billboards, Events and more to engage with their audience. What is really exciting is they are not satisfied and feel they could do more and be even more effective.

The question each of us must ask is where is our audience and even more specifically, where are they throughout the work day? Are we waiting for them to find us or are we looking for them?

The President's Photographer

Watch CBS Videos Online

I would guess this would be a dream assignment, but hard to balance your own life with it.

Hip Hop II - Circus

My Daughter's Hip Hop class had dress rehearsal tonight. She is the one in the middle with the solo with the little boy.

Tumaini Children's Home, Nakuru, Kenya

Zablon Kuria, director of Rock Bridge Ministries, was commissioned by Roswell Presbyterian Church, Georgia to go back to Kenya as a missionary.
His main calling is to build a bridge between the USA churches and Kenyan churches, in order to reach out to the community with holistic gospel in areas such as medical, educations and orphans.
Zablon says, "This bridge will help the under privileged in the society like the orphans, poor and the sick whom I have a passion for. Also both countries will learn from one another and share the same God who wants us to share in His goodness, His promises and resources and at the end, eternal life in heaven. I do all these things not for prestigious purposes but because it gives me great joy and satisfaction. It also pleases the almighty God whom I glorify."
Why sponsor a program/project

Tumaini projects cost $1.2 million. However, three years since their inception, they have operated only 47% of their targets. Sponsoring towards a project will be a step towards fulfilling the dream of creating the right environment that favors growth and sustainability for a targeted 400 orphans that they cannot take care of due to lack of adequate resources.

Every dollar you donate towards a project/program, Tumaini Children’s Home gets double. Early January 2009, they got a matching grant of $250,000. This means every dollar they get; they access another from the matching grant.

Here is the website for the ministry http://www.RockBridgeMinistries.org.
Here is Zablon talking about that gift and opportunity at Roswell Presbyterian Church on May 3, 2009.

Saturday with family

My daughter has already changed her decorations to reflect her love of the Jonas Brothers in her room. I am sure there are more things ahead.


At one of our favorite Restaurants the server makes guacamole at our table.



















Chelle's favorite drink is the Mandarin Orange drink.

Ice Cream Weather

Well we went out for ice cream tonight and saw lots of friends from our church and community. I think the weather was just perfect and had everyone thinking ice cream.

Here is Chelle and Dorie enjoying a cup of their favorites.


As you can see everyone was lining up for some of their favorite flavors.