From Diazo to Smart Cities: A Q&A with Michael Shaw

Editor’s Note: You probably already know Michael Shaw from his deep involvement with various reprographic associations. But did you know that he also set up an internet-based check data management program for a major bank in the late 1990s? Read on for more details about Shaw, who recently joined the IRgA Board of Directors:

IRgA: Tell us about the start of your family’s blueprint businesses, Central Blue Print and Jamaica Blue Print in the NY Metro area.

Shaw: Our father Jack was a salesperson for Fredrick Post selling drafting supplies. And like many people in sales, he got the bug to do it his own way after being passed up for a promotion. So in 1962 he started the company. He started out in the building I sit in, and he caught overflow blueprinting work from Manhattan. Some of his trusted friends who had operations in the city would give him overflow work, and that’s how he got started. Like any start-up he went through some trials – I remember his showing me how he wrote down on the back of an envelope everything he thought he would need to start the business. He found the envelope many years later and said holy sh--, was I clueless?!

IRgA: Did you hang out in the shop?

Shaw: We grew up in the business. [Shaw has a brother, Peter, who helps run the business and a sister, Joellen.] For Halloween all of my sister’s costumes were made out of the paper boxes. My parents were very creative – one year she was a mailbox, another year a streetlight. That was in the days of manual trimming. We would stand in between the trim tables and help, and we thought it was cool to see how deep we could get the waste pile and stand in it.

IRgA: When did you join the business?

Shaw: After high school I went to college and medical school, but after practicing medicine for a couple of years I became disillusioned with the path healthcare was setting out on and ultimately how it would be practiced. So I joined my parents’ business in 1986. At that time the business needed to become electronic with regard to its AR system. Before I got involved it was still done by the Colonial One Write system – it was all manual accounting. So I found an IBM business partner who had done some work in the offset world. They modified their software to fit our needs – it was not perfect but it was better than doing it manually. We ran it until 1999, until Y2K.

IRgA: What was the transition from diazo to digital like for Central/Jamaica?

Shaw: Diazo for the most part was not abundant in customer offices and we continued to benefit from stable print volumes. Even as plotters came on the scene, these were still for the most part creating a reproducible that would then find its way to the blueprint machine.

But, nonetheless we sold the plotters, plotter pens and media, which was additional revenue. What a number of us did next was the beginning of our entry into document management. We began to work with the CAD programs our customers were using. We installed seats of these programs and took customer files to print to our electrostatic machines to create the reproducible. We had the luxury of time to transition back then, because we did not have the external competition – like Sir Speedy or Staples or Office Max – yet.

But then the Xerox 2080 came out and that kind of changed things. Then we were just a stone’s throw away from plugging the computer directly into the xerographic process, and that was the day you stuck a fork into the diazo process and ammonia fumes. Fast forward a few years and everyone and their brother is a competitor, and you don’t need to mass produce prints, because we’ve moved to a decentralized print model.

IRgA: How did you survive?

Shaw: At first we didn’t really understand what was going to happen. Then CDs came on the scene, and half-size prints, and electronic distribution – those three things were really the harbingers of the change that was about to occur. The GCs didn’t need us to create mass quantities of sets and send them out anymore. Distributing images on CD and reduced size prints became common, and lower print volumes began to cut into our bottom line. Now electronic distribution and cloud storage has even reduced CD distribution.

Eventually we realized we had to spread out our wings as data managers. We’ve managed data for years – the print was just the vehicle for distributing the data. So we have to take something that we’ve always done in some fashion, and make it something that we market and sell. Many customers continue to reach out to us for their data needs even though we no longer manage hard copy, but instead file servers with project specific information. Here lies our new relevance for our customers in this technologic age, where the immediacy of access to your data is expected. We have now entered the digital services zone in reprographics.

At Central we are in the digital services journey. We are not at the beginning or the end – we are somewhere in between. At many repro firms they are now charging for any number of digital services; at Central we’re making inroads, but have not completed the transformation. We are constantly making in-roads to do it and do it better.

IRgA: You have done other technology work, too, right?

Shaw: Yes, back in 1997 I got a call from ABN AMRO. They wanted to provide internet access to their institutional customers to audit their check data. So we started Central Digital Resources and set up a system where these institutional customers could see the fronts and backs of their checks and the data on them. It was kind of a painful startup – we understand what it means to back up data – but it was fun and yet painful at the same time. We maintained two secure offsite data centers 24/7/365 for 7 years. We lived on the bleeding edge!

Now I’m working on other projects related to smart cities. A lot of the data related to smart cities is very complex, and the politicians who need to gain buy-in from their constituency need to have a way to show that data in a compelling way. So we can provide them an immersive, 3D experience that allows them to visually understand the data. But maybe more important is the need for design to be driven by technologies resulting in a better user experience that provides not only sustainability, but better health, safety, and wellbeing.

This business – it’s called the digit group – has taken me to the Persian Gulf and to China, as we were chosen by the Department of Commerce to participate in Presidential Trade Missions. Wherever there is a dense population, lots of migration, and a generally developing economy, they have to create their cities correctly. They have to do it right from the beginning. We help them achieve these goals.