Duplication Discount & Changes to Studio Website

A couple years ago we did a promotion offering a discount on duplication involving HDCam when we got our second deck. It seemed to be well-received so we thought we'd do another one now to celebrate our new home. It's a good way to get people here to see the place (when they drop off tapes) and it also allows us to offer a cost savings with most people looking for deals these days. The e-mail blast went out today along with posting on Facebook and Twitter. It's 20% off all duplication involving HDCam, HDV and Digital Beta. Contact Carlo Simone at 407-601-7878 x5325 or csimone@ideasorlando.com for more details or to place an order.

Last week we had an internal meeting about updating our website. Some adding, more subtracting and some modifying. The Studio website (www.ideasmediastudio.com) was the easiest one to modify so we did that first to see if we like it. Basically, we wanted to reduce some text and get the samples front and center. We're finding people want to see our work, wither as video or stills so we put the samples up front and added stills to the other pages. If you have feedback please let me know.

Audio A & Sales

First blog with it no longer just being about the new home and of course, the topic is new home related. We received bid #3 of 4 this past Friday for the build out of our new Audio A. We spent some time today with the submitting company so they could explain their bid and we could ask questions. I thought the session went well, except their number was higher than we were hoping, although the number was what we were expecting. You can't blame us for hoping, right? We should get the final bid tomorrow afternoon or Wednesday. At that point, we make decisions- value engineering of the room itself as well as who will build it.

We're also anxiously awaiting some meetings this week about some great projects. Hopefully we'll remain in contention and maybe even get some of them. Bob's traveling pitching a couple people/places and Shirley continues working some new angles. We also have a little sales initiative coming out this week. Be sure to check your e-mail or Facebook for the announcement. Just a little thing to incent people to come see the new place.

Changing Blog Topic

We started this blog 6 months ago to help people follow the process of us moving to our new home. Now, we've been in our new home for 3+ months and there's only so much to talk about when it comes to the new home. However, we do have a lot to talk about when it comes to the day-to-day activities at IDEAS. So, beginning today, the topic of our blog will no longer be specifically about our new home and will be the general IDEAS blog.

We will continue to use Facebook and Twitter for short & sweet updates but we will keep blogging about what we're doing at IDEAS. Thanks to everyone who has followed us thus far and we hope to keep you informed and entertained going forward.

Final Cut & Cable TV

A while ago I mentioned that our Final Cut was not behaving nicely. After receiving a time out, and some new inners, everything is back up and running as of last week. It's hard to tell whether what fixed it was really the problem or a second problem caused by our first repair guy beating the crap out of the cards as he was taking them out and putting them back in. Either way, it's fixed, up and running and already back in sessions.

We're also making progress getting our cable TV connections up around the building. Obviously it's not a high priority thing but it is nice being able to check in on things on CNN or ESPN during the day. What's also nice is that we'll have "real" cable as opposed to our old Disney cable. We also have HD. I'm going out this week to use my Best Buy Rewards Points and buying myself a nice HD LCD TV with built in DVD player.

Our 1st Birthday in the New Building

Yesterday was our 8th birthday as a company. Our first day as an independently owned and operated company was July 1, 2001. It's hard to believe it's been 8 years. A lot has happened since then, for the company, for the world and for all of us personally. But while yesterday was our 8th birthday, it was our first celebrated in the new building. Each year on our birthday we bring in a special lunch for the staff. In the old building we'd set up the food in the main hallway, cover the pool table and fit as many people in the lounge as possible. Inevitably we wouldn't be able to fit everyone so the stragglers would go in the conference room. What that means was we couldn't have a "family" meal all together on a special occasion. In the new building however, it's easy to set up food in the Story Lab and get everyone around the table in the conference room. We can easily get 20 people around our conference table and if we squeeze and work at it we can get up to 26 people around the table. It was really nice to have everyone in one room enjoying our birthday. Here's to at least 8 more years together.

Dry Erase Boards

The dry erase boards are in and installed outside just about everyone's door. It took a while to figure out how to mount them so they are removable so people can take them down to write on them or change their picture but they also need to stay up. We're in that middle area where if they get bumped too hard or if someone pulls it off the wall too hard they will come down so we'll see how they hold up. If too many fall we'll use stronger mounting tape which will keep them up but will also make the backing more permanent on the wall. It's nice though we already have a few of our kid pictures up and people are already using them to write messages.

Audio Progress, Bay 4 & Previous Clients

We continue moving forward with the design of our new audio mixing suite. While we have certainly hit bumps in the road we think the makings are there for a really great room. As was the case with the original part of the build out, we get to a point where we have everything we could possibly want in the room and then the financial realities set in and we need to regroup. That's where we are right now. We have our initial budget numbers and we are over where we need to be. The next phase of the process is determining how to value engineer the room while NOT altering the acoustics at all. Aesthetics and "wants" will be addressed so the "needs" of the room are not sacrificed. The great thing we have realized since we've been here is our Audio B room can do a lot more audio work than we originally thought so we really haven't skipped a beat in audio.

This week Dennis mounted one of our plasma screens in Bay 4, our Final Cut Pro edit suite. Now we have the LCDs in Bay 1 & 2 and the Lobby and a plasma in the Machine Room and Bay 4. We're still figuring out the best allocation for the two DLPs and the remaining two plasmas.

And finally, we thoroughly enjoy having clients in that spent time at the old place and are now seeing our new home. It's nice to get the client's perspective when it comes to how much more welcoming our new home is. We've been here for 2 1/2 months now so we're pretty used to it so we like seeing the reactions of people who are seeing our new home for the first time.