I'm just getting into the second week of some annual leave.  Note to my employer:  Don't let me remember just how... how... relaxing, yes!  that's it, relaxing annual leave can be, I digress...

Today's story is that for the sake of nothing more than the coffee was good and that else I would spend the day on the couch, I went to wire up a network in a friends store today.  It was also for the sake of making sure I could still handle on some of the basics like crimp RJ45 ends on CAT-5CAT-6 and so on.

I don't think my friend is able to get just what I get from it.   It's something like brewing your own beer and juicing your own oranges, something organic.  For four hours I got to get dusty in the problems of his business.  Very interesting.  He uses a paper diary even!

Consider this little thought experiment:  So your business involves printing peoples photos.  Way back in the day, the average guy shot 24 or 36 frames on some Kodak Gold and got the role printed at the minilab, because otherwise it was just a tin - it wasn't "photos" until you printed them.

Then the digital world hits and 10x the people own cameras, PDAs and phones.  Now each frame is a photo in its own right as soon as you take it!  You could print it on your inkjet, email it, post it to Flickr, show it on your ipod, show it on your media centre, show it on your mobile, et cetera...

Now so many more people are taking digital pictures, but instead of everyone printing every frame, about 15% of people taking digital images are making any prints at all.  Smaller slice of a bigger pie.  This wasn't lost on Agfa, Fuji are watching and it isn't lost on Kodak and Konica Minolta.  Time to give the business model a rethink... but how?!?  As a small business you may not get too many bites at it! 

(Love to hear any of your ideas - post a comment!)

Tangentally, this reminds me of a tech firm I once had chance to experience.  Management thought the one performance review form could be used for both a Sales Exec/BDM role and a junior network admin role.  Turns out that "Networking" means different things to these two roles.  Whoda thunk it?  *rolls eyes*

Sorry for the cryptic title, it's to subtly encourage your thoughts down an empirical path...

Listening To: spose iz Lily innit, a'rite?