Today was the first day of the workshop here in the New York area. We have a wonderful group assembled this go around. Our eager students are from as near as 15 minutes away and from as far away as Pennsylvana. They arrived at the workshop first thing this morning, eager to listen and learn. I love to share the things I've picked up over my forty plus years in business but even more importantly I want to fan the flames of pasion for what they do. Almost all of us got into this business because we wanted to do really creative things and yet so many in the sign busines end up doing the same boring thing day after day after day. One of my primary goals in doing my workshops is to get people thinking in different ways - to think WAY out of the box and for them to discover it is way more fun that actually working for a living. It used to be that your local sign shop was where you went to get creative things and not just flat, boring signs. Sadly, it is not often that way any more... but it can become that once again if we choose. My task through these workshops is to show how that is possible.
Today went by in a blur as I did my lectures and answered a hundred questions from the enthusiastic group. This is going to be a fun few days for me and I hope for the rest of the group as well. I only had time to take a couple of pictures through the day and only one of them was good enough to share here. It is of one of the students (Dan) as he was grinding the edges of one of his samples in readiness to paint.
We put in a 12 hour day today and wore everyone out real good. It's my bet I got everyone's head spinning with new ideas already. I hope they are able to settle down enough to sleep tonight. :) Tomorrow morning, bright and early we'll do it all over again!
-grampa dan