Fishing and the Technology Business

I’m a lucky guy.  I entered the technology space while living in Anchorage Alaska recruited to work at the Alaskan Office Source.  While there I met my close friend and owner of Fish Alaska and Hunt Alaska Magazines, Marcus Weiner.  Since then we have had many an adventure in Alaska with many more to come.

I just returned from a trip to Whale Pass Alaska on Prince of Wales Island.  I was there with Marcus and Brian from fish Alaska along with “Jersey Mike” to do a story on a “do it yourself trip” on Prince of Wales Island with Alaska Fish Tales Lodge. 

When we left, our goal was to fish Halibut and Silver Salmon but the fish god’s had different plans for us.

The weather didn’t cooperate for much deep sea fishing and the silvers didn’t come into the rivers in any numbers.  We had to make some choices.  One option was to simply throw in the towel.  OK that was never really an option.  Other option was to explore the island and find fish.  That’s what we did.

We started early (4:30 am) and finished late (9 pm)……… and we caught fish.  Not the fish we had originally planned, but we caught fish.  Dolly Varden (Arctic Char), Rainbow trout, Cutthroat Trout, Dungeness Crab and Pink Salmon……….. and we caught a lot of them.

It rained every day, it was cold and we put all of the gear we had been provided to test to the ultimate test………. And we found success in a different way than we set out to.

How does all of this correspond to the technology business?  It is a perfect parallel. Our role is to serve our customer in any way that we can.  Many times it starts with a “copier” producing paper and then we "explore the island".  We talk, listen to our customer, and we look at what we can do with that piece of equipment to "catch other fish" or in the case of technology to solve other problems in the business.  This can be adding applications to the machine to customize scanning, feed a workflow, capture information……..  It’s virtually limitless.

It all starts by giving your prospect the opportunity to learn about what we can do and you can’t do that that without putting yourself on their island.

Watch Fish Alaska Magazine for the story of our adventure at www.fishalaskamagazine.com.