Turns out I need a USB to USB cable so I went foraging though my boxes of cables and found at least 20 USB cables. About 10 were of the "printer" variety. Seven had really small plugs for phones and GPS and who knows what. A few had USB on one end and a phone / earphone jack on the other. One had RCA jacks on the other end. Not one had the "regular" USB to "regular" USB. So tomorrow I'm off to buy one more overpriced cable.

USB seems like a great idea - "Universal" and all that - perhaps someone should standardize it?

This brings me to my annual public service message about backups. If you don’t backup it’s only a matter of time until you can have the sick feeling. My article two years ago still applies. I still love Backblaze. Here is the link My Answer to "How To Back up a PC?". If getting real backup wasn’t one of your new year’s resolutions then add it, sign up for Backblaze, and check it off your list.

Now for the more geeky...

Alas this drive was not backed up and so the story turns to the fact that it is a Drobo. As many of you know I am in the business of creating video for businesses. Unfortunately, the bandwidth out of my office can’t keep up with the amount of data I create and the one thing that Backblaze won’t do is automatically exclude my FCPX render files (please?)

So, the Drobo is my video backup and project archive. Losing the drive is not the end of the world as all active client work is on my Mac and backup to the Drobo using “Carbon Copy Cloner” But none the less, disturbing.

But I didn’t lose anything! The Drobo had been secured for my trip and my first message when remounting the Drobo was “you have removed too many drives” with all of the drive lights flashing red. I hadn’t removed any, so I powered it down and reseated all the drives. Drobo went into recovery mode with the drive lights flashing green/yellow. This started about 6 PM and in a couple hours my first partition showed up and I had access to its files. That is the state where I left it running overnight.

In the morning, now about 13 hours into this mess, the second partition reappeared and I had access to all of my files. Drobo was still in recovery mode since all of the files were not yet redundantly secured. After about 18 hours, all the green lights returned to the Drobo, all files returned, all data secure. 

That was the second time Drobo did its thing for me. I am a fan. (Except for the part that I have to unplug it to log into Lion)

Just for backup fanatics...

All of my business data along with my wife’s Mac is backed up on a Time Capsule. All client data is in Dropbox, which provides a 30 day backup of deleted files and allows me to not have to backup (or copy files) to my business notebook.

When on a shoot, client video is on SD cards and is not (yet) captured redundantly. But every used card is immediately write-protected and is backed up to my notebook while still on site, to my Drobo on return to the office, and to the production Mac immediately. The Drobo goes to a safe deposit box when I travel. 

Still some holes in this process, but I am tightening them as time and budget permit.

http://boxfreeit.com.au/Productivity/tip-want-to-be-more-productive-dont-file-your-email.html

As the myriad of details about equipment, locations, sets, talent, production, and technologies fade into history, it is the story that is all important. It is the story that must be memorable.

Conference video capture is handled differently from promotional video as the goal is clear-capture of the speaker and their Powerpoint. Capturing great sound is also critical.

And last, economy is requried. This conference yielded over 4 hours of video and highly edited production of that length is not in anyones budget. My preferred approach is to put up a capture of the presentations for reference by those who attended and the larger audience who are interested but could not attend. If a higher production value, faster moving, PBS style video is needed, I build a highlights reel after all of the full length video is produced.

We are pleased to have provided this video to the Worcester County Food Bank and to support reducing hunger both in central Massachusetts and around the country.

While we lead with video, we creatively add photographs to build out a memorable story. We can use this approach with any social event or in business videos where the video along can't tell the whole story.

We created this video so our client could demonstrate a unique feature
of one of the products they sell. 

We created this overview to introduce the team and talk about
what the client values most in services they provide.

I have three simple rules for commitments:

1. Tell me what you are going to do and let's agree on it


2. Do what you committed


3. If you can't do what you committed, then come talk to me soon enough that we can take whatever steps are needed to accomplish that original commitment.

The best outcome is that there are no surprises as work moves forward. When these are not followed, there is a continuous drama around surprises, disappointments, and failures 

A corollary is that there have to be consequences. If there are no consequences, then there eventually develops an unstated 'who cares' attitude and business rewards that are, well, just not that rewarding.

Management has a clear role in building a commitment system that consults 'doers' in making the commitments, setting the right goals, and not managing by intimidation. Often I see a tangled web of bad management choices countered with lip service commitments where the team knows that the goal isn't achievable but won’t confront the leaders. That's not a great place to work. I've worked in those and unfortunately you probably have too. 

If commitment systems are broken it's not a quick fix; it's a change to the culture that can easily take a year or more. Part of making the change is rebuilding trust and open communications. I've built teams with strong commitment ethics and seen it done by others. It's a challenging change but builds a strong foundation for a high-quality workplace.