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My experiences in business taught me that major changes loomed around the corner every ten years or so.
To Wit:
- The first ten years in our a-v communications business, we specialized in slides. By the end of that ten years, slides were a computer-driven industry, from digitally authored slides to big multimedia extravaganzas. But —
- By the next decade, video had become affordable for the production business, and I knew we had to make a move. I left the slide business for video. By the end of that ten years, we were not just doing video but editing it on computers controlling the tape decks. But —
- In the next ten years, laser discs had become all the thing, and with the right equipment, they could be controlled to be fully interactive. We specialized in interactive media and landed national clients. But —
- By the turn of the century, DVDs had taken the world by storm, and they had a lot more native interactive capability than laser discs. And it was built into the DVD, rather than an external computer. We created many complicated sales and marketing DVDs to great success, but —
- The increasing speed and capability of digital photography led to an era of time-lapse photography, which we turned into stories by micing in video and original music. The last one we did was in 2014, but —
- I retired.
I still do the occasional video because, in the end, video has been the throughline for most of my career. It has been distributed in many forms, and the public often sees the form before the function of storytelling. But —
It’s still communication. Beginnings, middles, and ends. That has never changed.