Grand Lake to www.360grandlake.com, Come in!

Grand Lake, she is a changin’ from this old timer’s point of view. As with our society in general, the massive strides in technology utilized on Grand Lake since my arrival in 1976 have been mind boggling. When I founded The Chronicle of Grand Lake in 1988, ads were constructed on something called layout sheets utilizing some bold type, border tape for effects and perhaps a graphic or photo if you really wanted to go high dollar, And with the advent of what was called in the industry, four color or processed color, a client could take advantage of a dynamic presentation, but color separations had to be done by a specialty lab, at a hefty price, and provided to the printer in advance. Those layout pages, required to generate our newspaper, were then delivered to ‘ol Bob Bellatti in Nowata, Oklahoma, each Thursday for printing. Back in those days, a camera shot would be taken of the layout page, a plate burned from the camera shot negative and placed on the press with the end result being the printed page. A lot has certainly changed and I might say for the better. You see, in those days a bag phone was about as techie as it got. The strides in the newspaper business are but a reflection of the far reaching impact technology has had on American business. Now, everything is digitized, color photos are readied for print by merely clicking the ok button on any number of desk top publishing programs and layout sheets, plate cameras and more are but a thing of the distant past. The send button has replaced those lovely weekly trips to Nowata. But what has happened with cell phone technology and the massive growth of on-line services have dwarfed what I experienced in the publishing business. The information explosion, as it was called in those prehistoric days when I was with the Bell System, included whispers from Bell Labs about cell service, envisioned individual work stations equipped with some farfetched thing called electronic mail, computers would have access to company records and something called networking was in the developmental stages. We commoners new this crap these geeks were talking about in New Jersey was but a figment of their imagination. Let’s fast-forward to 2010 on Grand Lake. One of the publications here on the pond, The Grand Lake Business Journal, is only available on-line and not even offered in the print version. Although the name implies it’s only for businesses, its real strength lies in local news. As soon as an event or news item takes place, it’s posted on-line right then. There’s no waiting till the next publication date to stay abreast of what’s going on. This approach is quite a deviation from the norm. The Chronicle of Grand Lake, under the direction of Brian and Sue Ruth, has continued with, what I would call the standard approach to presenting their product in the printed format for the publication’s readership. But they too have an on-line version of the publication. When the current week’s issue hits the streets, it’s also available via the web. But there’s more and it’s call 360grandlake. www.360grandlake.com What was it we heard as kids growing up watching Superman on Saturday mornings? “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s Superman!” In the case of 360grandlake, it not a newspaper, it’s not a magazine; it’s a directory of services and information not seen before on Grand Lake. Now me and the Lake Bum like it because it provides us a forum for us to spout off our opinions on their site and maintain our egos at their current large sizes. Our famous, or infamous, opinions and thoughts can be found under the Grand Splash tab. Rather appropriate for “Big Splashers” like us. But for a change, it’s not just all about us…even if it should be!!! This 360 deal was birthed in Wichita, Kansas, by probably some geek like guy similar to those I referred to from Bell Labs. It started out as an on-line business directory by category of business. Then some of those businesses wanted to offer specials to their customers in the way of coupons so that was incorporated. That generated interest from customers who wanted to take advantage of “Deals” so the next step was to offer free subscriptions. I know you Grand Lakers are a bright bunch and have probably already figured out that as a subscriber you get e-mail notification of specials offered by any of the pages on 360 you subscribe to. Me and The Bum are partial to The Pier 13 page. Not only do you receive notification of booze and wine, or was that whine, specials, you get a reason to go see the lovely Miss Tiffany and a dose of her positive thinking Grand Lake style and the importance of being fit. As you can see, that fitness part falls on deaf ears when it comes to yours truly and The Bum. But there’s more. The promotional page can serve as a client’s web site, but if the business or person already has a functional web site, it is capable of directing viewers to that location. And there’s stuff like cross marketing you’ll just have to check out with the super-gals running this deal. Bringing 360 to Grand Lake was the brain child of Michelle Robertson, the former super-sales princess at The Chronicle and KITO Radio before that. Trust me; this gal could sell ice water to an Eskimo, as demonstrated by the number of business clients she has already signed up. She also happens to be the granddaughter of Grand Lake legendary icon Carlos Langston. You know, the one the marina is named for and floated down the Arkansas with something called the Oklahoma Navy with a couple of guys named Nigh and Clinton. You might say the bloodline knows a little bit about success and the promotion of Grand Lake. As a personal testimony, I recall sponsoring her calf at the Jay County Fair, after I fell for what had to be one of her first sales pitches. Joining Michelle in her techie endeavor is Tammi Longacre, who many of you business people know from her ad production days at The Chronicle. She is involved in the promotional page design portion, web page design and other graphics oriented activities. They make quite a team. So just how far has technology really come on Grand Lake? We probably need look no further than one of our lake’s major operators, who got his start pumping gas and fixing boats for Elmer Bomar, at Bomar’s Marina on Duck Creek, to serve as a barometer. In those days, Joe Harwood couldn’t be convinced of the importance of crawling out of a boat bilge to take any kind of call on an old rotary dial plain black phone. And now, the same guy who refused to carry a cell phone for years, conducts, business, answers e-mails and scheduled his entire work-week on a I-phone. Throw in some Facebook, Twitter and much, much more and you truly do have an information explosion. The times they are a changing Grand Lake. Check out 360grandlake and pay particular attention to the Grand Splash tab as it’s the most important. Just kidding, but I do think you’ll find it an interesting site. See Ya’ Around the Pond!!