Mingle Bells - Denver Style
 A great time was had by all at the Denver version of Mingle Bells, held December 16th at Denver Bookbinding. Special thanks to Gail Lindley for opening up her beautiful facility and to Luann Wood and the team at Your Bindery Finishing Services for arranging for all of the food, cocktails and decorations. For more pics, visit the WSPA website
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 New Years Resolutions for Managers
We often come up with ambitious goals for the coming year in terms of weight loss or other resolutions but what goals might we set for ourselves to become better managers?
Reliability, for example, isn't exciting or glamorous, but it's vital to your credibility as a a manager. Your reputation and career depend on your peers' and employees' belief that you'll follow through. Remember these five tips for keeping that reputation up to date:
1. Consider before committing. Commit only after you've considered whether you have the time, abilities, and resources. Be honest with yourself. For example, will you really work as hard as necessary on a task that's secondary to your own goals?
2. Prepare for challenges. Few tasks are completed without some setbacks. Reliable managers aren't diverted from completing what they promised. Avoid the temptation to quit. Anticipate the obstacles you're likely to encounter, and plan a way around them before they occur.
3. Face up to problems. If you're not going to be able to complete the work as promised, say so as soon as possible. Without making excuses, be clear about what happened to prevent you from fulfilling your commitment. Provide an accurate update on the situation and specify what you need to finish.
4. Coach employees. Include the steps above- careful commitment, follow through, and honesty - in all assignments you give your workforce. Add them to checklists, job procedures, training materials, and so on.
5. Recognize reliability. Track employee reliability as part of your overall evaluation process. Thank reliable employees and point out their accomplishments to the group. Dependable performance should be one of the qualities that you and others reward in your company.
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 Support your industry by giving the gift of print this holiday season
If you are like many, you may still have some shopping to do. Printed publications are a wonderful holiday gift and there is no better time to take advantage of savings at the largest graphics arts online bookstore in the world - Printing Industries Press. Click here to learn all about the savings and use the DISCOUNT CODE Pubs 14 at checkout.
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Be A Drip When It Comes To New Plates When installing new plates in your facility, it's critical to look beyond typical considerations which include calibrating the new plate to the platesetter and creating new plate curves for press. The new plates also have to be compatible with your pressroom's chemistry--this includes everything and anything that might come into contact with the plate's surface. By performing a drip test, you can remove any chemicals that may attack the plate's surface and cause problems on press. To perform a drip test, follow these steps: - Image a large 75% screen tint block onto your new plate.
- Drip all chemicals onto the screen tint that may come into contact with the plate's surface (either directly or indirectly). You can mark what was dripped onto the plate by scratching the name of the chemical into the plate's surface.
- Allow the chemicals to sit on the plate surface for at least one hour.
- Check for any chemistry that attacks the emulsion of the plate and remove those chemicals from your pressroom.
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 Economic Flash Reports
A great member benefit of WSPA, through Printing Industries of America, is access to economic Flash Reports, produced by Dr. Ron Davis. These outstanding research reports can help you identify trends in our industry and cover such topics as profitability, economic output, manufacturing efficiencies and much more. If you are not already receiving the Flash Reports and would like to be put on the mailing list, simply forward your information to June Crespo at jcrespo@wsprint.org. You can also access, free of charge, all archived copies of flash reports for 2014 and earlier by clicking HERE. You must be logged in to the PIA website to gain access. If you are having any difficulty, call Member Central at 1-800-910-4283, ext. 770.
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 Track Payment Patterns Almost all of the significant credit losses that occur in our industry occur with established clients, whose business is getting into trouble. These are clients who used to pay in 30 days, but now it's 45 trending to 60 or worse. These are clients with cash flow problems which are almost always caused by operating losses - they're spending more than they're taking in. If you continue with them, you're running a real risk of a big write-off. The problem is that you need their business and you may very well like them personally. Regardless of this, at the first sign of a payment slowdown, you need a frank discussion with them. If they're willing to discuss their problems and the steps they're taking to turn them around, you can reasonably work with them (while monitoring progress). If you are stonewalled, the time to get off the train is now with future orders on a COD basis and unpaid items placed for collection.
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 New Name for WSPA Partner Marathon Solutions, Inc, WSPA's long-time credit card partner has a new name and is now doing business as CardConnect. Rates have not changed and you will continue to receive outstanding savings. WSPA members typically see a 20-40 percent reduction in their processing fees. For some companies this program alone justifies their annual membership dues. In addition to great rates, the program offers: Point-To-Point Encryption - Sensitive payment data is instantly encrypted the moment a customer's card is swiped, meaning it never hits or is stored within your system. Patented Tokenization - Taking the protection of encryption one step further, tokenization replaces sensitive payment data with a unique identifier known as a token, which renders cardholder data unreadable and therefore useless to hackers. Superior Service - Each member receives a single point of contact the moment they sign up. If you'd like to sign up with CardConnect and start saving today, contact Jon Williams at 913-953-5303 or jwilliams@marathonsi.com.
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 Happy Holidays From WSPA As 2014 comes to a close we would like to thank you once again for your membership support. WSPA has seen many changes this past year and we look forward to a very successful 2015, providing a number of exciting events and educational programs. From our family to yours, we wish you all of the best of the Holiday Season and business prosperity in 2015.
Please note that there will be no E-Connects next week. Your weekly newsletter will return on January 6, 2015!
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Quote For The Week
"He who has not Christmas in his heart will not find it under a tree."
Roy L. Smith
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