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Perpetual
War
Perpetual
War : Current Issue, Issue 34, Volume
2, for October, 2011. New Issue published
every month, and updated throughout the month. Next issue due online
November 2011.
Thoughts:
102811-0800 - Passinault:
Very, very late with the October 2011 issue of Frontier Pop,
due to other obligations with a huge web project, but got it up
before the end of the month! The next issue of Frontier Pop, issue
35 for November 2011, which will be about slander being used to
discriminate, will be online as soon as this one is indexed; maybe
as early as another week.
111111-2000 - Passinault:
Well, then again, maybe NOT. I just now got the October issue
online, and am in the process of overhauling the site, too, which
slowed down the issue. In this issue, too, I retro-applied our new
slogan, "Know Things", and am also retro applying the
new format. I'm working on something big this weekend, too, so expect
the November issue to be online Monday morning!
INITIALIZING
ISSUE
INTRODUCTION BY EDITOR AND PUBLISHER C. A. PASSINAULT
Please
Note: This will be a short issue, because all of my time
is being spent on business, transferring and organizing files, and
on building and deploying an array of 16 photography and design marketing
and support sites. This post will, however, be interesting, because
it will let everyone know what is currently going on with my projects
and career. The next issue, issue 35, for November, 2011, should be
published in early November, and it will be about slander being used
as a form of discrimination, a topic which is long overdue to be addressed
(and one which I will be able to take a little time to address).
Regarding the term “War”: The term “War” as
used in these examples, is a metaphor describing a fight for change.
It is not a threat, or any sort of admission of wrongdoing, and any
war that I describe is legal, professional, and ethical. These are
wars for change in industries, and are strictly non-violent; they
are wars fought with ideas, and with superior business models. Thank
you.
Back
in Issue 9 of Frontier Pop, “Three
Front War”, for September 14-20, 2010, I reported
on waging a three front, multi industry war in modeling and talent
industry, photography services industry, and in indie film.
I can report at this time that the three front war is ongoing, despite
my efforts to tone them down or call for truces, because of issues
beyond my control. As a matter of fact, I am, at this
time, inclined to resign myself to continuing to fight these wars
in all three industries, as I do not see an end anytime soon, and
am beginning to believe that fighting these wars will be a normal
part of doing business in these markets. Basically, there are elements
to these markets which don’t know when to quit, and which continue
to do whatever it is that they are trying to do, even among those
whom realize that they are beat, and continue to be beat. I’m
winning, and while I am making enemies because of my efforts, I’m
a leader among both my allies and my enemies. Everyone reacts to what
I do, and follows my lead, and there is a lot of anecdotal evidence
to support this claim.
I’m now in a state of perpetual war in, mostly, those three
industries.
When Frontier Pop launched last year, it almost became a four front
war, with the fourth front being the rival Tampa pop culture web site,
although that web site had a lot to do with the war in Tampa indie
film. The rival pop culture site, despite a rather brilliant re-design
and re-launch a few months after Frontier Pop launched and showed
our hand, failed to come back and fight, though, and quickly folded.
It was a case of too little, too late, and the owner threw in the
towel and announced his retirement at the end of this year. It gets
worse, too, as he handed down what was left of his pop culture site
to a vindictive, petty, balding punk, and that punk was the main cause
of all of the problems and the fighting with that rival pop culture
site which inspired the creation and the launch of Frontier Pop. The
angry punk, however, isn’t as smart as the original owner, and
is not nearly as friendly, so that site is expected to decline, and
to not pose any competition to Frontier Pop at all.
Not that Frontier Pop works to compete with the rival pop culture
site, or reacts to anything that
they do. We are just better by default. We won, after all, and continue
on under our own direction, and with concepts and content well beyond
anything that our competition can come up with.
This said, I am aware that Frontier Pop needs a lot of work, despite
being the best. Some sections are not finished, and entire issues
are still works-in-progress. I will be spending time the next few
months, after I get some sites up and running, leisurely taking the
time to go back and finish the issues and supporting sections, as
well as polishing the site. It’s just going to take a lot of
time, and Frontier Pop should be completely done and up to spec by
late next year. At any rate, as issues, sections, and other content
are completed, current issues will link back to them; I will keep
everyone informed.
The loss of the rival pop culture site, however, make me laugh. I’m
disappointed, too, that the other site would give up so easily, after
being beat back and repeatedly put in their place and humiliated.
Enough of that, though. It’s time to see what has progressed
in the last year, and why the fight will continue for several years
to come. It might be fair to say that, although some of the wars could
be concluded in a few years, that I expect to be still fighting in
at least one of these fronts a decade from now. I’d put money
on all three fronts, though, as I really do think that this perpetual
war will be a part of doing business and in working in these industries,
especially when I am rocking the boat by revolutionizing those industries.
Modeling
and Talent Industries
Things have been relatively routine on this front, with a lot of advancements
made on the part of myself and my allies, especially with my talent
resource sites bombarding the industry on a 24/7 basis. A large part
of this fight has been in combating and in undermining modeling and
talent scams, and this has proved to be spectacularly successful in
the past year, with at least one major, and two minor, Tampa talent
scams now out of business. Are “models needed for major department
store fashion shows”? Well, ask the former owner of that talent
school when they used deceptive job marketing to sell training and
career services to aspiring models and talent. Ask them if their fraudulent,
deceptive marketing, which is what made them a modeling and talent
scam, finally caught up to them, especially with many of my powerful
web sites, all of which are the top results in search engine inquiries
for anything related to local modeling and talent, exposing their
unethical tactics.
This year, I was very happy to learn that I was directly responsible
for shutting down three modeling and talent scams, and one of those
being a major one.
In the next year, expect the fight to shift to new directions, such
as addressing unethical businesses which rip off models and talent
by convincing them to work for free (this is especially true in events
and in so-called fashion shows where models are exploited by working
for free, under the guise of “charity”, while the event
planners make a lot of money), as well as finally putting the modeling
and talent agencies in their place. Another thing that will be addressed
are models and talent who feel that they do not have to invest in
their careers; these foolish amateurs are about to be schooled hard
when my models and talent move in and take jobs away from them, leaving
the un professionals to be stuck working the events where they are
not paid, where the organizers walk away with all of the profit. It
will be exactly what they deserve.
Of course, some might consider photographers to be “talent”,
which brings us to the most furious fight this year.
Photography
Services Industry
This really heated up this year. With most of my fight in the modeling
and talent industries focusing on modeling scams and agencies the
past few years, with little fighting between myself and other “photographers”
since the last major photographer battle in 2005, this one took front
and center this year. Ground zero: Tampa Bay shootout and workshop
events.
I’ve been having a sort of cold war with photographers in the
Tampa Bay market the past six years, with most photographers keep
quiet as they studied what I did and stole what they could; mostly
from my web sites and blogs. Of course, in 2008, there was a major
online conflict between myself and several other photographers on
a classifieds site, where my allies and I ended up flagging and removing
so many ads over TOS violations that the site malfunctioned and did
not show up correctly (even today, I police that site, and flag and
remove shady ads routinely. A few months ago, I even managed to removed
several weeks of posts in just a few minutes, so I suppose that you
can say that this is one active, and hot, battlefield currently being
fought on presently!). Not counting the online battles from 2008 to
the present, and the SEO 2008 issue where photographers who aspired
to compete with me spammed search engines (this has, to date, largely
been rectified, with the road paved for major online operations in
the next two months with the development and deployment of an array
of 16 marketing and support web sites; See my blogs for more, being
the Tampa Designer Blog, the Tampa Photographer Blog, and the Tampa
Photography Blog), there were a few incidents where I caught photographers
stealing, and using, content from my talent resource sites, and at
least one photographer stealing one of my ads and recoding it for
his use. Of course, there was also a lot going on where I could not
directly see what was going on, with photographers spying on me and
trying to figure out ways of competing with me.
With some of this fight heating up in 2008, there was a reason that
I took my time addressing what some of these photographers were doing.
First off, the economy crashed, and there was little point is working
to address what was going on, showing my hand, before it could really
be used; with no one buying anything, having the best business operations
and marketing is self-defeating as your competitors learn from you.
So, I took my time and idled my business, still out booking other
photographers. Also, I took that time to properly research, develop,
and prepare support infrastructure for what needed to be done. That
support infrastructure is now complete, and I did it systematically
over the past three years. With all of the support infrastructure,
and planning, it is highly unlikely that any of my competitors, and
especially my aspiring competitors, can even begin to adapt and compete
any time soon. I will have the market advantage for several years,
and by then, no one will be able to touch me in the market. How and
why? I cannot say. Just wait and see what happens. That array of 16
photography and design marketing and support sites, which are new
Mosaic Class sites, are just one facet of a very large, very complex,
puzzle of a diamond. My latest tactics and technologies are designed
to be resistant to theft, reverse-engineering, and copying. They are
also designed to be extremely tough to adapt to, and even myself,
knowing all of the details, would have a tough time competing with
my own tactics if I did not have my resources.
This year, though, the fight became red hot. After spending six years
researching shootout and workshop events with the idea of eventually
starting my own, I attended a shootout workshop back in May 2011.
Despite what the organizer and his minions are probably claiming,
too, I did not go with the intention of spying or competing with them,
and I was, in fact, invited by the organizer. My plans for doing my
own shootouts and workshops were still on hold at the time, and years
off.
Things change, though, especially when you are misled, lied to, and
treated rudely, and the experience convinces me that something had
to be done to set standards in the market.
So, my plans for my own photography shootout and workshop events were
greatly accelerated, and many details had to be worked out, such as
making such endeavors worthwhile, as well as completely compatible
with my photography business.
The first phase was to set up the photography shootouts as a separate
business, as well as the workshop events, and to make sure that each
had a specific purpose, using some ideas that I had developed over
the years with my film festivals, conferences, networking events,
and in the indie film war. That done, I figured out a way to make
them compatible with each other and cross-supportive. The shootouts
would be used to evaluate subcontracted professionals to work the
workshop events, as well as to promote the workshops. Because of that
evaluation purpose, photography shootout events which were used to
evaluate professionals would have to be free of charge. The workshops,
on the other hand, set up as a business, and a more cost-effective
and professionally relevant alternative to schools, would be businesses
which would provided paying subcontracted jobs to the working professionals
who instruct the students, and would make money by students paying
to learn.
With those details solved, I attempted my first shootout event on
September 25, 2011, depending upon strangers to attend, with no core
staff, as I did not want most of the models who were affiliated with
my other business interests participating. Well, only one person showed
up, and we cancelled the shootout due to lack of participation. Later
that day, I got with the one model who was affiliated with and did
a shoot with her.
The failure of that first attempt made me realize that you had to
have a core staff in place, and that you could not rely upon strangers
to make an event happen. The key would be that, with a core staff
in place, you could proceed with the event regardless of the participation
of outsiders; additionally, with your own models in attendance, it
would give photographers, models, and others much more of an incentive
to get involved. Problem solved, once I figured out a way to bridge
my models and talent from my other business interests to the shootouts,
in a way that there would be no conflicts of interest or any security
issues. Well, within days, I did figure it out, but I’m getting
ahead of myself. The main resolution is that once the shootouts are
staffed, and you get other to attend, the shootout event dies its
job, and there are no similar issues at the workshops, which are different
business models entirely. The key to that, though, is that they shootouts
have to do their job well in order to enable to workshops, which made
the shootouts the main piece of the puzzle.
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