Tag Archives: U.S. 1 Newspaper

Safe doesn’t always work

Business, , , , ,

Safe doesn’t always work, says Eleanor Kubacki, President & CEO of the EFK Group.

She speaks on Wednesday, October, at a Princeton Regional Chamber breakfast that starts at 7:30 a.m. Her talk, which will be at 8:30 a.m., is on How to Fine Tune your Marketing Campaigns on a Shoestring Budget. Chamber members pay 
$25 at the door. 

Quoted in a U.S. 1 Newspaper story by Michele Alperin, Kubacki says, “People are afraid that if you do things outside of the norm and you fail, they will get criticized and fired. That is why marketing tends to be safe, and safe doesn’t always work.”

Jacque Howard: Building community in Trenton

Around Town, Business, , , , ,

Jacque+HowardJacque Howard grew up in Ewing in a large family — 12 uncles and aunts and six siblings. He learned what “community” was. Now he aims to help Trenton by helping create community with his nonprofit Trenton 365, as profiled here in U.S. 1 Newspaper.He was quoted like this: Trenton was a major industrial port once. Once. Ago. So let it go. Stop trying to turn the city back into something it used to be. Start focusing on what it could and should be.”  

I listened to Howard’s story at the Princeton Regional Chamber breakfast today, and I’m buying into it. He recorded his talk and posted it at his website, here.

My comment to Howard at the chamber meeting, at about minute 38 on the tape, “With your personality and your media access, you can do what really needs to be done, which is to put people together. Racism and prejudice are part of the Trenton problem. and when you get people together so that  they are friends, and they have a friend in that city that they can trust — that’s going to help.”

His response: “If I can get three or four of you guys to agree –it’s going to change this community. I can connect you with somebody, Whatever you want to do — do a quick project, get lots of media attention, at very low cost —  that’s what Trenton 365 is about.”

The Trenton 365 website has lots of fascinating programs, including this interview with Bart Jackson of Bart’s Books done at Panera Bread. The sound is a little rough at the beginning, but it evens out and Jackson is always worth listening to.

Trenton 365 is broadcast on WIMG AM 1300 and streamed live at wimg1300.com Tuesdays from 8 to 9 p.m., and on WWFM 89.1 HD2 and streamed live at jazzon2.org Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 7 p.m. But you can always get it on the website.

ADA is old hat now

Around Town, Business, , , ,

wheelchair-symbol-handicapped-parking-signs-4

I remember when the American Disability Act emerged 25 years ago. It signaled a sea change not equaled until the Y2k scare, which also provoked dire predictions of ruin because of projected costs. At U.S. 1 we reported on which restaurants had wheelchair-friendly bathrooms. We interviewed lawyers in the suddenly popular disability field.

Now accommodations are standard everywhere, no big deal. But according to the feds, accessibility is still an ongoing problem. 

Words, not slides

Business, , ,

EileenSinett_colorIn presentation circles, telling stories is the new black. Eileen Sinett presents a July 24 workshop, on how storytelling makes us more effective speakers.

As a journalist, i helped tell stories of accomplishments and life lessons, but it’s even better when folks can learn to tell their own. Everyone has at least one fabulous story that needs to be told.

U.S. 1’s Diccon Hyatt explains in this article. Tell stories with words, not slides.

Stories told, stories to tell

Around Town, Memoir, , ,

sharon rein b & WThe guy who hired me to work at U.S. 1 Newspaper in 1987, Richard K. Rein, has just published a column, a mini memoir, recalling his 50 years in journalism, starting with a summer job as a high school intern.

My BFF, Sharon Schlegel, said goodbye to her column today in the Trenton Times because she is moving to St. Augustine. I won’t reveal her age but I’m betting she can count at least to 50 years in the business if she starts with her own newspaper, as a kid, and counts her stint as the first woman reporter on the U of Penn newspaper.

Both talk about what journalists call their “voice.” Rein says he turned down a theoretically more prestigious job in order to “find a writing style of my own.” Schlegel says that developing a voice of her own was “an evolving process, an opportunity to explore myself as well as my subjects.”

My style is not as distinctive as hers, but I’m trying to preserve what I do have by continuing with this blog. Use it or lose it applies to wordsmithing as well as to exercising.

I also resonate with a point that Rein makes. He says, “If I see a story (and somehow I see stories in the strangest places) I need to tell that story. I can’t help it. If I edit a story, I want to make it better. Can’t help it.”

Me too. I can’t help it. Hence this blog.

Schlegel’s readers will miss her voice. I’ll miss it in newsprint, but I’ll get to hear it on email — and in person. We plan to Skype a lot, and Florida is just a plane flight away. Perhaps I can persuade her to be a “guest columnist” for Princeton Comment from time to time, or maybe she will write for a Florida paper. I’m betting she’ll have stories to tell.

This Huffington Post post, “6 things I wished I had known about cancer” has no real Princeton connection, other than all the people I’ve known who had and have cancer.

talking head wayne cookeWell, that’s not quite true. There IS a Princeton connection — to Wayne Cooke, who wrote “On the Far Side of the Curve: a stage 4 colon cancer survivor’s journey.” Cooke far outlived his expected years and shared his tips in this U.S. 1 article and then in his book (now downloadable for free).

Both sets of tips are valuable. I put them here so I can supply them “just in time” to those who will need it.

In 1989 Bill Gates was the speaker at the Trenton Computer Festival, the oldest such festival in the world. Now the festival turns 40. Read about it here.

Sara’s Advice to Future Brides

Around Town, , ,

sara and dan

If you are planning a wedding, know someone who is planning a wedding, or remember your own wedding — read the last installment of Sara planning her wedding in U.S. 1. Fun, poignant, cogent.  Bent Spoon cupcakes instead of a wedding cake and remorse over no video.

John Springrose: “Prototype your imagination”

Ann Yasuhara, Business, Healthcare, Technology & Innovation, , , , , , , ,

Sometimes a better chamberspeaker says what they said to a U.S. 1 reporter as published in the previous issue. Not so this time. Diccon Hyatt’s interview with John Springrose was way different from his talk at the Princeton Regional Chamber breakfast this morning. Springrose’s company (formerly inDimension3, now Philadelphia-based Koine) pioneers in 3D printers, more aptly named “rapid prototyping machines.”

An IBM-er turned investment banker, Springrose  began with a “then and now” show of how innovation increases productivity, even though jobs are lost along the way. For instance, IBM’s first middle market computer, System 32, cost $40,000 and had only 5k of memory but in 1975 it could replace accounting functions. Checkers were replaced by self checkout and scans, tellers by ATMs, German auto workers by robots, and so on. “Innovation does lead to productivity,” he tells students, “and it forces us to think.” Be an innovator or run the risk of losing your job.

Examples of how a rapid prototyping machine can work: High school student gets an idea for jazzing up the wine drinking experience. Prints a prototype of a new wine holder, gets it manufactured in China, sells several hundred units on ebay for $40 each, total cost of each unit $1.89, accomplished this in less than a month. Product: a wine bottle holder that is lit from underneath, sending colors through a bottle of white wine. Cool. True story.

A plant “goes down” for lack of a part? A 3-D printer could make that part in a snap. A corporation could have a rapid prototype machine in the lobby and greet clients is greeted with a logo or miniature product from their company. Now that’s hospitality.

Three-D printers like toys can cost as little as $700 but, to be reliable, one should cost at least $5,000 for business use. Customers are mostly overseas. Springrose worries that the U.S. is getting left behind.

In addition to plastic, products can be in wood, metal — “anything that will melt.’ His industry today is where IBM’s System 32 computer was in 1975. “You give me the industry, I give you the use,” he offered.  “Prototype your imagination,” he challenges. “If you think about it, you can do it.”

As for the difference between the interview and the talk — the reporter dug into the not-so-successful early stage of Springrose’s company, when it was making cheap printers that were not reliable and got scathing online reviews. That’s why Springrose moved to the high end. More than 700 startups make 3 D printers but just three– including Koine — are working on business-quality tools.

Springrose has a very personal interest in the medical applications for his devices. He looks forward to the day when a rapid prototyping machine can print out a liver or a kidney. That’s because he has lived through a liver transplant. But printable organs won’t happen any time soon. Springrose came without a demo machine because — the day before, he demoed to doctors at Jefferson — and they broke the machine.

Photo: L to R, Grant Somerville (chamber program committee), John Springrose, Peter Crowley (chamber CEO).  

Towers, teapots — and boathouses

Around Town, Business, Dance and the other arts, Memoir, , , , , , , , , ,

Michael Graves in his studio DSC_0043 ret, 13 inches wide, credit Jon Naar, 2011 (1)

You probably read the New York Times  “designer of towers and teapots” obituary on Michael Graves, who died yesterday (3-12-15) at 80.

You probably did not see this excellent video of Grounds for Sculpture’s Tom Moran reminiscing about Graves, taken yesterday by Times of Trenton’s Michael Mancuso. Grounds for Sculpture has a 50-year Graves retrospective running through April 5.  Everybody is talking about their Michael Graves memory.

Early in my tenure at U.S. 1, Rich Rein assigned me to write a cover story on Graves. In the early days, U.S. 1 was a monthly, then biweekly, and cover stories ran at least 5,000 words.

The only way Graves could fit me into his schedule was for me to accompany him on a 6 a.m. Amtrak train to Washington, D.C., so Rein agreed to buy my business class ticket.

Bleary eyed, notebook equipped, I met the courtly Graves on the Princeton Junction platform. Two of the things he said stay with me today. He was telling about his upbringing. “I guess your mom was proud of your drawings and put them on the refrigerator?” I asked. His answer was . . . pause, “No.”

I thought that was a poignant comment and made a mental note to visibly appreciate my own children’s talents more.  At that point in his career, though the Humana building was up, and the Disney hotels were in the works,  no significant buildings carried the Graves signature in Princeton. Just a couple of house designs. It took a long time before a major Graves postmodern design, for the Arts Council of Princeton, would make it to the streets of his home town.

In any case, it was a heady moment for me. Until I joined the staff of U.S. 1 in 1987,  I had been a dance writer. I had interviewed famous dancers, but never an architect, let alone a famous architect.

Then, as  the train pulled into Philadelphia, Graves called my attention to the boathouses along the Schuylkill River. “Each is a different style, each a gem,” said Graves, of the 19th-century designs, noting that he assigned boathouse design to his Princeton classes.

Baltimore is my home town. I  got off in Baltimore and taxied to see my mother.  I made that train trip monthly for more than  a decade. Remembering that morning, I always craned my neck to catch a fleeting glimpse of the Schuylkill boathouses.

Photo by Jon Naar, U.S. 1, January 26, 2011.
That story “Called the Architect for the ’90s, but his work is invisible here,” was published on November 29, 1989, soon after U.S. 1 Newspaper had gone from a monthly to a biweekly. The paper has published many stories on Graves since that time, searchable in the archives.