February 22nd, 2010
On Friday morning we got up really early and picked up our little Budget rental truck and drove from Anaheim to our top secret storage facility near San Diego…
Ludger - Vice President and part-time truck driver
Once we got there, it was time to assemble all our furnite. Or at least the furniture that Ikea delivered with complete sets of bolts and screws.
Jasmin, Dominic & Ludger
Two of the three people pictured in the image above do not believe in reading assembly instructions…
Ludger
Ludger and his levitating screwdriver trick…
All too soon it was time to head back to Anahiem and start putting the booth together…
The SmileBooks booth
Voila!
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February 20th, 2010
Today’s the Southern CAlifornia Photo Expo trade show! Dominic, Jasmin and I worked till midnight last night (which is when they kicked us out of the convention centre) setting up the booth. I’ll post pics of the booth tomorrow but ere are a few of our trip to California to tide you over!
Dominic trying to work on the plane
Dominic and I tried to work on a presentation on the plane but we struggled under the cramped conditions. We loved every minute of that 12 hour flight from Frankfurt to LAX!
Greenland from the plane
But the view outside was breathtaking!
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February 10th, 2010
Dominic and I have offices in the R&D tower on the CeWe campus.
R&D Tower on the CeWe campus
To get our sample books shipped to Anaheim, we have to take them to the dispatch building.
View of the dispatch building from the R&D tower
What’s the best means of transportation on a snowy day? That’s right! The R&D Wussy Wagon!
Dominic and the R&D Wussy Wagon
At least it was nice and warm once we got inside.
Dominic packing sample books
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February 8th, 2010
Preperations are in full swing for the Photo Expo trade show in Anaheim on the 20th February. Today we got some of our banners back from the printers. These banners were designed by Indra who does all of our graphics on the web site and for the newsletters. Indra is so patient with us. She’s a saint. She never rolls her eyes when we say things like, “Oh Indra, could we make that logo a leetle bit bigger and move that text a wee bit to one side”, etc… Which we do often.
Dominic and Indra with Arndt in the background
Dominic and the short banner
Ahhhhhhhhhh and you thought we were really going to go to the Photo Expo with Carolin’s Play Doh booth!
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February 5th, 2010
Yesterday CeWe Color, SmileBooks’ parent company, won the Best Innovator award presented by WirtshaftsWoche and A T Kearney.
On hand to collect the award for CeWe: Dr. Olaf Holzkämper, Dr. Hella Hahm, Dr. Rolf Hollander, Dr. Reiner Fageth & Thomas Grunau.
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February 4th, 2010
I’ve spent the past few days working from home because the doctor has “Vorboten” me to speak. I have no idea how I strained my vocal chords. Certainly not by shouting at anyone here!
Anway, this morning I left my nice and cozy “home office”:
to come back to this:
It’s total chaos and i’ve only been gone 2 days! (update : my office has been cleared of clutter and is now presentable)
Why so messy and why so many books stacked on every available surface, you ask? Because in exactly 2 weeks time, Dominic and I will be on a plane, heading for LAX to take part in the PMA Photo Expo and the trade show. SmileBooks will have it’s own booth and we are so looking forward to interact with existing customers and also to win over new fans.
Yes, we will have fantastic prizes on offer! Yes, we will be dishing out special discount coupons! Yes, we will be giving away FREE BOOKS! No, you won’t have to pay for autograhps!
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January 26th, 2010
Today we sadly said goodbye to our Intern Carolin. She has spent the last 2 weeks helping us orgainze our booth for the Photo Expo trade show in Anaheim on the 20th of February.
Carolin spent most of her time designing and ordering sample books but she found time to construct a stunning 3D Play-Doh minature of our booth which she presented to Dominic:
PlayDohBooth
Carolin, Dominic and the booth
We’re going to miss her but you’ll all be relieved to know that she’s decided not to study architecture when she leaves school!
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January 19th, 2010
I’m sure that by now you know that SmileBooks is the US brand name of CeWe Color. CeWe Color has it’s head office in Oldenburg, Germany. What you probably don’t know is that Oldenburg has a basketball team called the EWE Baskets (www.ewe-baskets.de) and they are the reigning champs of the German Basketball League, or as we like to call them, “Deutsche Meister”!
CeWe is also one of the main sponsors and the German CEWE PHOTOBOOK logo features on the away unifroms as modeled by Je’Kel Foster, who is one of the star players, in the pic below:
EWE Baskets away uniform with the CEWE PHOTOBOOK logo
We’re all basketball fans here, even the CEO has season tickets and whenever i’m in Oldenburg I go to the games. Tonight they’re playing MEG Göttingen and of course they’re going to win (next week’s game against Alba Berlin will be a lot harder). I’ve even brought my fan scarf to work because i’m going directly to the game from the office.
If they win the championships this year, i’ll give away a jersey as a prize on the blog!
Tracy's EWE Baskets scarf
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December 28th, 2009
Noooooooo, not Bruce Springsteen but Dr. Reiner Fageth who is the CTO of CeWe Color and is in charge of nearly all the charaters you’ll read about in this blog. Happy Birthday Sir!
Dr. Reiner Fageth
I know he’s not going to be happy that I used one of the formal portaits from the press section of the CeWe web site so expect this image to be updated when I get back to work!
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December 27th, 2009
Last Tuesday Dr. Dee invited me to join his division for a Glühwein-filled stroll around the Christmas market. These are the guys (& gals) who are in charge of production & systems software.
Gerd D (Dr. Dee), Miriam & Gunnar
Henning, Christoph, Sebastian & Rainer
The pics above are not black & white because I was going through an arty phase that night, it’s because my flash turned everyone into wild red-eyed demons. Yes, I have Photoshop and know how to retouch images, yes our SmileBooks Software also contains an Image Editor that will correct red eyes on your images (run SmileBooks software, double click on an image to open the Image Editor, click on red-eye removal, save changes to the original and you’re done. You don’t even have to order a book!), but just saving the pics as B&W is also a dandy way of eliminating those pesky red eyes.
But the one of Birte and Jessie standing in front of the carousel needs to be in color.
Tags: Dr Dee
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