3 Year High (it's not what you think...)

Hey y’all,

I want to share my joy of the single greatest week I have experienced since I joined Pictage almost 3 years ago. It started with WPPI, which is always great – long days with passionate people who like each other, crammed into a highly-compressed environment. I truly love that.

However, this year we celebrated the evolution and incredible success of the Pictage community by making WPPI entirely about them, and it simply couldn’t have gone any better, IMHO. As a result of this increased focus on existing member benefits (over non-member signups), we transformed our big booth from its class-room design to a very intimate, members-only lounge. First, we removed the lecture-podium and replaced it with two comfy chairs. Then, instead of one “speaker” running a slideshow of bullet-points, we asked our speakers to act as “hosts” and share the time they had with our membership in this setting, talking WITH them, rather than AT them. The result was magical. Like, when Denis Reggie and Joe Buissink were there together, and Joe told the story of how Denis introduced him to digital capture – even standing behind him and reaching over his shoulder periodically to adjust settings… Or, when Amber and Nathan Holritz were joined by Pepper Nix and Mitch, and they explained how building a successful business together can actually make their relationship stronger… Or, seeing Robert Evans and Robert T. Williams discuss how to “control” other wedding vendors, from two completely different personality perspectives… And, my personal favorite; seeing Me Ra Koh and David Jay sharing why they love this business.

And, while all this was happening on the show-floor, one of our hot new Pictage members (Steve from A Better Sound) was upstairs shooting an HBO pilot, aimed at educating brides and grooms at how to find the perfect wedding photographer and plan the wedding. They interviewed many of our spokespeople and lounge-hosts and we hope to see the series air sometime later this year. In the meantime, he promised to give me some of the better “video-bites” for posting on PictageTV (http://www.pro.pictage.com/community/media.html), so tune in, or stay tuned.

Then, Tuesday night was our annual WPPI party at Napoleon’s in the Paris hotel. This was a member-only event and a capacity of about 200 people… we filled up past that and ran out of food within 40 minutes. And, there was still a line all the way down the corridor, just to get in! I’m guessing we had 400-500 members and guests during the short two hours we hosted it. Definitely, the BEST PARTY OF THE YEAR! (Those of you who came may have seen me hunkered down in the “cigar lounge” waving at the people in line.)

On top of all that, we had a meeting of Pictage’s Board of Directors that actually began at the Pictage member lounge on the WPPI tradeshow floor. They also had the chance to speak directly to y’all, where they heard some of the NICEST things about what we’re doing to empower this community. To those of you they met, THANKS for the really generous and kind words.

Finally, after our best WPPI show ever, we had the first meeting of the Pictage Advisory Panel. What a group (http://forums.pictage.com/showthread...light=advisory) of really generous and smart people. And, more amazingly, we were able to corral them into a meeting room for five hours - as volunteers, no less - taking an extra day at the end of a long WPPI week to give us their advice, criticisms, idea and predictions. It was truly a meeting of the minds and we are now processing all of the information that came out of it so we can share it with y’all on the Community site (http://community.pictage.com). Give us a couple weeks on this.

And, ultimately, we gauge how well we are doing by listening to our membership, not only through shows like WPPI and Advisory Panels, but also with those “Would you recommend us?” surveys and watching the number of new referral members who join each month (remember, we’re only focused on adding studios to our membership who came to us as “referrals”). That said, I am incredibly happy to report that both our “score” from the recent surveys and member referrals are at all-time highs. This tells me that we are successfully “doing” as well as listening, and you are noticing that. For me, that is the ultimate satisfaction, and I am content (at least for the rest of today.) ;)