The Beacon

Hey everybody,

This missive finds me working on the mock up. Things are going well, as you may have guessed. Here’s my week-in-brief:

PERSONAL STUFF:

• Pushed my departure up North by a day because of the TV spot. I’ll be leaving directly from the studio around 8 a.m. Tuesday and heading to my place to pick up my gear.
• My oldest friend’s barbeque picnic was really cool. Had a chance to touch base with he and his family, and Carla got a chance to meet everyone. Good eats, restful environment, too short. Had to get back early to keep working.
• Haven’t even thought about packing yet…
• It’s my birthday on Wednesday the 30th. I’m certainly not feeling my age this week!

FLASHLIGHT STUFF:

• Today is a crazy day. Don’t know how much time I have to do stuff, but I’ve managed to optimize what I need to print down to fewer pages. I’m printing this copy onto 32 lb. Laser stock, so there’s a bit of bleed-through from the inkjet. Essentially I will be printing every second spread and marking the “on camera” ones with post-its. Looks beautiful so far!
• I’ll be working on my responses at every convenient moment over the next forty hours, to pare it down to the requisite 40 seconds per answer.
• Gotta get my suit pressed, my shoes shined, etc.

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I’M ON TV!

Yup it’s confirmed. Next Tuesday morning, I will be appearing on A-Channel Ottawa’s Breakfast Television/Morning Show. This is the first of hopefully many media pushes over the next few weeks.

I had an email confirmation from an Ottawa newspaper already, so as long as I perform well, I may be able to use it as a springboard.Had a good day on Friday [they’re all turning out that way lately]. The A-Channel information is as follows:

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Today was fraught with busy.

I shot off about a bazillion emails. Mostly to Greg and Jeff about the mock up. We had a little problem with respect to Greg’s burner being on the fritz and him having to FTP the files to me for placement. Might take a bit to get it done, but I should have everything ready for placement once I’m up north and I can take it to Staples for production.

I Called media companies out of Montreal and Toronto. The president of the Montreal agency was really helpful. Because they represent a lot of Quebec companies, we talked about the English-heavy content and the Quebec sponsorship policies in the education system there. Hopefully it’ll help me to refine my approach to Quebec schools.

He also gave me the names of agencies for different interests. We got talking about the fact that they’re starting to represent the Quebec Milk Board [as a possible regional sponsor] and he mentioned another media company, who handle some of the Ministry campaigns. Which is where he dropped the notion of approaching Social Services. I forgot that they do a lot of PSA’s for children. Wicked suggestion.

Additionally, he provided me with contact information for five more companies.

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Today’s topic is related to establishing additional credibility and accountability.

GRANTS:

I haven’t pursued this much lately for the following reasons:

• The circuitous labyrinth that the government has set up for their grant system is daunting. I have a limited amount of patience for clicking here, reading eligibility requirements there and finally finding out that you need to have published two consecutive issues before they’ll look at you.
• There’s Arts, Publishing, Magazine and Small Business grants, so there are actually too many to spend time reading.
• There’s a structure for Provincial vs. Federal and the two rarely meet in the same place.

Anyone who feels the urge to filter for my eligibility is more than welcome, I’ll gladly accept URL’s on this one. It all boils down to time for me. Once I find one that I’m eligible for though, I have to prepare a package for them too.

At my per-sponsor page rates, my time is far better spent speaking with “private money” people right now.

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So here’s the deal.

Each Sunday I’ll post my life experiences, both personal and professional, to give people a look at what’s involved in living my crazy life.

So without further ado…

PERSONAL STUFF:

• Got back from a 4-day holiday which encompased a visit to Greg’s, a trip to London to meet Carla’s best friend and a stop for lunch in Kingston to see another friend on the way back.
• Saw “Snakes on a Plane” and “Clerks II” at the drive-in on Friday. Very fun! It’s been forever since I did that.

FLASHLIGHT STUFF:

• Got hold of my journalist friend at the Ottawa Sun as well as my contact at the CBC on Friday. Both are passing my information along to the appropriate people. Fingers crossed.
• Talked to or left messages with a billion print media directors this week. Bouncing from one to another is very time-consuming, but I’m closing in. Hopefully tomorrow I will finally reach someone appropriate. I feel like Frodo on a big quest lately. Hope I get a magic item out of the deal.
• Looking forward to finally having all of the mock up material together in one file soon, so that I can prep it for printing within the next 2 weeks. Fortunately Staples is ubiquitous, so even if I’m in the Frozen North I can still get it printed within my deadline.
• May have an insurance quotation this week. Finally.

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I called the half-dozen national and Ottawa media outlets on my to-do list today. Haven’t heard anything conclusive yet.

A couple of interesting things of note. One is that none of the columnists I contacted were listed online with their respective paper. This says a lot to me about how we view the importance of education in the province. I can get a sports writer’s email instantly, but I’ve got to call the switchboard if I want to talk to someone about the merits of a new tool for teaching the young.

I also find it interesting that the educational columnists all pick late August to go on holidays. Not like there’s a back-to-school buzz happening this week or anything!

Wow. Started to sound like a rant there.

Nevertheless, that’s what I spent the work day doing. Now I’m going to go off into cyberspace to try and find email freeware to handle the 11,000 solicitations to educators.

ANCILLARY MATTERS: I seem to be doing fairly well at carving up my task list. After putting together 49 items after the July 9th meeting with my Brain Trust, it’s now 60% complete.

Mind you, the stuff that’s left is pretty big [getting the book coloured is in there, along with finalizing contracts and printing & distributing issue one] and I haven’t added many new things either. Still, it’s marked progress.

Onward!

A lot of folks have been wondering if Flashlight Comics is a sole endeavour, since it’s just little old me up here on your screen, jabbering away. People who’ve checked out the “About” section of the company website know that’s not so, but it’s also just information about the people, not their connection to this fantastic project.

So without further ado, I’m going to introduce you to one of the amazing members of the Ironlungfish Press Brain Trust.

Stephen Geigen-Miller

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I was on the phone and generating emails all week. It’s like the outside world is simultaneously beckoning and mocking me. After I write this, I may even go for a walk.

If I have time.

My latest concerns are legion. In point form, my task list this week has been:

• Contact all of the contributors for permission to use their work in a sample copy. I’ve gotten confirmation from nearly everyone, so I’m pretty confident that we can go ahead and lay out the rough draft of issue one! I’m totally stoked to see what the mock up will look like
• Try and reach media outlets, to inform them of Flashlight’s existence. PR cold-calling was never my strong suit. Sometimes I get flabbergasted when the people on the other end sound sceptical [I’m sure they get a lot of duds, and they need to verify between shameless self-promotion and actual news items]. Nevertheless, I persevered and made contact with the CBC and the Ottawa Sun. Next up: 4 billion other media outlets!
• Formalize the Educator Resources. I’ve gotten hold of many of the scripts to be turned into Running Records for the enormous task of levelling the text for issue one and I’ve been consulting with some terrific teachers about developing the comprehension exercises and interactive lessons. I hope to have the outline for this finished and up on the site well before we ship issue one
• Try and nail down the French content. This has proven the most interesting of all of the talent scouting that Greg and I have done. Both of us are pretty Anglo, and despite the wealth of terrific French-language material out there, neither of us has met that many creators from la Belle Province. We’re promising 18 pages for issue one and we’re still combing the hills for seven more
• Finalize design changes for the company website. Jeff has come back with some dazzling design ideas for the site and claims he has the power to bring them into existence by the end of the weekend! If anyone can do that, it’s Jeff “the Machine” Wasson! I’m really excited by what I’ve seen so far
• Develop marketing strategies that produce results. What this entailed was essentially reading a lot of hyperbole from gas-bags and whittling it down to its core information. Many Sales Specialists who post on the web or write books are often pretty fatuous. Flip-side of that: Many Marketing Specialists have a lot of really fun [and sometimes impractical] ways of describing reality
• Obtain insurance quotations for the business. This includes Errors and Omissions & Directors and Officers coverage. Unfortunately there aren’t many companies to choose from. Luckily, they’re brokerages so they’ll be looking for the best rates on my behalf
• Crunch the boring numbers. Actually, this week it seemed a lot less wretched to do this, since we were applying those numbers to the Media Kit on the website. I made a pretty nice looking rate card for advertisers so of course; I had to populate it with the most current rates, which required me to do the tedious calculations to arrive at the right figure. Once that was done, that number would get plopped into place and voilà! The end result looks pretty sweet

All in all, I’ve had a pretty cool week talking to a lot of talented and interesting individuals. Tomorrow I imagine will be a lot more of the same, but at least I’ll get out in the afternoon for a few hours. If it’s nice out, I’m even having a picnic dinner!