Guest Post By: Katarina Gospic - read other posts by Katarina here.

On the 17th of May 2008 I started a journey that where to change my life – my first trip to Africa. I was going to Tanzania. Two weeks of studding and two weeks of vacation was waiting. Here follows four snap shots from the trip:

I – First impression does not always lastsAs I went off from the aircraft I could feel the heat hitting me in the face – I had finally arrived! After catching a cab I and my two friends arrived to the hostel were we had pre-booked a room. The first sight that meet us was two young guards with a weapon each looking at us. I was not mentally prepared for that… We presented ourselves and told them about our reservation. They told us that there was none and that we were at the wrong hotel. We were sure that we were right and tried to reason with them. They suggested that we should head out in the pitch black night to find another hotel. As we were talking I could not help that their weapons made me really uncomfortable. Finally, after one hour (the longest in my life) of reasoning we got our room! The first thing I did as I came in to the room was to wash my hands –as I placed my hands under the tap I noticed that the water was brown! My friend told me ironically “don’t switch on the light next time”. “Oh my…” My first impression of “Africa” was set. From this point nothing could get worse.

II – To do magic out of nothing

Luckily everything from the first day just got better! Four weeks of travelling in Tanzania was fantastic (!) – I got used to non-working toilets, holes in the ground, mosquitoes, cold showers, zero electricity etc. During the two first weeks I visited different levels of the health system, from dispensaries to university hospitals. What was strinking was the very limited amount of doctors (e.g. 6 doctors on a population of 0.5 million people!), still they managed to do so much! As a medical student it was very interesting to see so many rare diseases with obvious manifestations (something you would never see at home due to prophylaxis and screening programs). The most amazing scene was when I visit a 20 square meter “incubator” (it was a small room in the pediatric ward) tempered to 37 degrees with 60 neonatal children sharing beds three and three. What was even more amazing was when 60 mothers (!) entered the small room to breast feed their children - could you ever imagine this happening in your country? There were 100 stories like this.

III – Trivial everyday things that we take for granted Another were touching meeting was when I made a home visit to a woman and her child. She lived in a house mad of clay and sticks. The floor was of soil and the roof was made of steel with holes in it. The room she rented was 8 m2 and her bathroom was localized in the yard – the absurd thing occurred when we gave her one of the gifts - a key chain. The problem was that she did not own a key!

IV – Destiny makes life pathways cross

One of the most interesting meetings occurred on a bus from Dar es Saalam to Arusha. I sat next to this properly dressed Tanzanian who showed out to be a business man. After I had told him that my father was from Croatia this man asks me if I speak Croatian and started to say some Croatian expressions. Can you imagine my facial expression?! This black man spoke perfect Croatian! It turned out that he had worked for the UN for 10 years (5 years in Balkan). He was heading to the Sullivan conference  and was hoping to meet business partners interested in making investments in Tanzania. During the 10 hour bus trip he taught me everything about Tanzania, his life story from living in Tanzania to becoming a great American business man and his work for the UN. (For all of you business men/women reading this blog I suggest that you read a little bit about Tanzania and you will find out about their natural resources (gas, copper), gem stones (e.g tanzanite – which is only found in Tanzania!) and their BEAUTIFUL nature!). His life story was inspiring, as a 22 year old he had left his country (after saving money), studied economy in the States, started to work for the UN for 10 years, ended his high status job at the UN as it did not match his expectations and started his own (international) company! His salary included more zeros that I could count to, but that was not the most fascinating part. It was that he returned back to his homeland in hope to fulfill his dream, to build up his country! So why did he take the bus? Well, all the flights were booked and his private chauffeur had a couple of days before been involved in an accident…..

Traveling does not only change people it changes the world!

I came across this cool representation of the size of the American economy.  Check it out.
source

On September 8, 2000 world leaders met at the UN headquarters in New York City for the Millennium Summit. During this meeting 189 countries agreed to attempt to reach 8 goals by 2015. More on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) can be found here. The goals are as follows:

1.) Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2.) Achieve universal primary education
3.) Promote gender equality and empower women
4.) Reduce child mortality
5.) Improve maternal health
6.) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7.) Ensure environmental sustainability
8.) Develop a global partnership for development

One of the newest products that was built with the sense of urgency the Millennium Summit’s MDG helped to articulate is LifeStraw. Today, over 1 billion people have limited or no access to clean water. Naturally, access to clean water is an essential and through technology Vestergaard Frandsen is able to provide thousands of liters of drinkable water for less than a cup of coffee.

LifeStraw is a personal portable instant water filtration system. Water is sucked through a series of mesh filters, iodine coated beads to kill bacteria and active carbon. The chambers in the flute like device are able to clean the water and eliminate bacteria. How big of a problem does this address? 6,000 people die everyday due to no access to clean water - these are mainly children.

When I was working for the World Banks’ Africa Region I was introduced to many of the trials and tribulations of the countries and it is overwhelming. I’m pleased to see innovative designs like LifeStraw and LifeStraw Family.

If you have interest in helping a family of 5 get clean drinking water for a year for only $15, donations can be made to the Rotary Club of Ft. Lauderdale Florida. Here is a photo of the LifeStraw Family system.

For this post I decided to keep it close to home and interview my older brother, Anderson Schoenrock, CEO of ScanDigital.com. Stay tuned as I have a few other interesting entrepreneur interviews in the works. A sincere thank you to my big brother for agreeing to do this interview.

Tell us about ScanDigital. What are you trying to accomplish?

Sure thing Kendall, thanks for the opportunity to talk to your readers. ScanDigital is an innovative company that provides a service to convert old photographic and movie materials to digital format. We make it easy for people to preserve, organize, and enjoy their photos and video in the digital age. ScanDigital has developed a unique process that is secure, user-friendly and returns a high quality end product. Photos and video are converted to digital format and continually quality checked throughout the process. For photographic materials, our service includes scanning and professional retouching. The digital files are returned on a CD or DVD as well as in an online gallery at ScanDigital where they can be shared with friends and also archived for safekeeping. Our goal is to provide the highest quality service to our customers, with the least amount of hassle possible and in a manner that is highly secure.

What’s the backstory? How long have you been around? How did it get started?

My college friend, Mike Mothner, approached me about the idea after Christmas 2006. He gave his mom a digital camera and after seeing how easy it was to organize all of the new images on her computer, she asked how she could do the same with the old photos from the garage. Mike and I realized there had to be more people out there with the same question. ScanDigital was born in early 2007 and then launched in June 2007. The first year has been nothing short of phenomenal. We’ve grown from 2 employees to 20 employees. Processed more than half a million images and greatly improved our services along the way.

The experience has exceeded my expectations on every front. That’s not to say we are lacking our share of daily ups and downs like every start up, but the overwhelming trend as been onward and upward. I am especially excited for Year 2 as Year 1 has been focused on putting in place the groundwork and building blocks to take the Company to the next level.

500,000 images scanned is impressive. What new products are you bringing to market?

When we launched we simply offered the conversion of 35 mm negatives, slides, printed photos and photos in albums. Since our launch we have added numerous photographic formats to cover a wider spectrum of materials - and especially materials for high end amateurs and professional photographers, pre-loaded Digital Photo Frames, Custom DVD Slideshows and Video and Film Conversion services. In addition, our overall process and service has gone through several iterations of major improvements.

While the fundamental service is the same and the quality has remained high from Day 1, we have built a highly unique workflow management system called the EssentialTracker. Through the EssentialTracker all 14 steps of our process our integrated within our facility and customers have access to information about the status of their order in real time. This has taken our internal logistics to a whole new level that is unmatched by any other company in our market space.

What is unique and different about this service?

When we started ScanDigital we took a fundamentally different approach to this business than any of our competitors. Our service is focused on the customer and the user experience. Everything we do is focused on making a very technical, time consuming, daunting process easy for our users. At the same time we realized that there is a need to accommodate a wide spectrum of customers. We work with people that range from 80 year old grandmothers who know little to nothing about computers to professional photographers and design studios that are involved in photography professionally. This means we needed to create a process rigid enough to be fast, safe, secure and high quality while flexible enough to meet the needs of all customers. This lead to our Dynamic Order Form, which literally changes on the fly as the user makes their selections. Steps that are superfluous for that individual customer are hidden and other steps are revealed only as needed.

From a pure service perspective, we are the only service to have both the online photo gallery and conversion service components. We not only convert old material to digital files, but we also post them to our online photo gallery. People can also upload new digital images to their gallery in order to organize their images in one place, creating a seamless photo archive.

ScanDigital also has the fasted turnaround time in the industry, something that is highly valued by our customers.

Who uses your services?

One of the best things about this business is that it appeals to a wide spectrum of potential customers. Pretty much anybody that has any photographic materials or video materials sitting in an out of date format is a potential customer for us. Families use our service to preserve and protect their images against floods, fires, or other disaster. Photographers use ScanDigital to convert their old photographs to digital files in order to sell them on stock photo sites. Brides and grooms use our service to have Slideshows made to play at the rehearsal dinner. We’ve worked with doctors to convert medical slides into digital. Our list of professional/business clients includes architecture firms, design firms, party planners, professional organizers, funeral directors, governmental organizations. Clients that most people would recognize include the City of Pasadena, MTV Studios, Volcom, Shane Battier (NBA Star - Houston Rockets) and Dana Delaney (actress on Desperate Housewives).

Given that we appeal to many different markets, I’ve found myself attending events that I would never have imaged. A few weeks ago I attended a Craft and Hobby Convention speaking about how digital images can enhance crafts. Last week I was at a Funeral Director Tradeshow to meet with funeral directors who are ideal for our affiliate program. In early June we’ll be exhibiting at the world’s largest Scrapbooking Convention. It’s exciting to think of new ways to expand our audience but sometimes I have just laugh when I look at my schedule.

What’s the best part about this business for you?

I’ve been asked this question several times and it is hard to pinpoint the best part. There are so many things I enjoy about what we’re doing here and what we’re building. Internally, I think it is our team and building our team. We’ve hired great people and they’ve helped build a successful platform. We’re very much in a hypergrowth stage which means a lot is asked of our employees. Things change all the time. At one point we were hiring a new person every two weeks. People that were hired to do one thing are now doing performing other tasks. This requires a team that is willing to roll with things a bit, it’s a lot to ask and the team on the whole has responded in an outstanding manner.

Externally, it’s hearing from our customers. As I mentioned our customer’s are our focus and as part of that I have made it a goal to reach out to as many of them as possible to hear what they liked and what they did not like. People have asked me how I can afford to spend so much time soliciting feedback and interacting directly with customers. I am not sure how I can afford not to! I think what we’ve put in place is great, but I always assume it could be better. Listening to our customers is important for growing the business the right way. It is always especially rewarding to see the positive impact we’re having on people. We’re really in the business of helping people bring materials back to life that are otherwise useless in many cases. When I hear how excited someone was to view a set of slides for the first time in 30 years or to see an image they had forgotten about it really motivates me to continue building our business and reaching more customers.

Anderson, thanks for your time in lining up with me. It sounds like you’re building a great company. I will open the floor up to additional questions. Feel free to leave a question in the comments section as Anderson has graciously offered to answer more questions as well. Comments as always are also welcomed. Thanks!

For the last four months I have been consulting a video startup company based outside of Philadelphia called FountainHeadNetworks.tv. FHN creates (many) online video episodic shows. My role was to help develop a distribution strategy that would bring their videos to the masses, grow that audience over time, help standardize the production process, and prime the company to launch 50 new shows this year alone. As of last week, my work there is done.

Feel free to check out some of their fun shows like bitchslapped.tv and for the Spanish speaking community Encanto.

One of the most challenging aspects of ending a consulting job is how deeply I inject myself into the project. As I’ve previously written about here and here, I have a tough time disconnecting myself from my work. I am very passionate about the projects I focus on and find myself wondering about the number of new viewers or what is next in the production queue - even though those pieces are now only distracting me from my next project and the launch of my new company.

Does this happen to you as well? How easily do you unplug from the work activity or do you take it home with you and think about work related issues frequently?

Drop me a comment and let me know what you think!

Dear Loyal Readers,

Recently I’ve taken a short break from blogging. While this has occasionally happened in the past, this time I’m a little more sidetracked. I’ve been building a few startups in the meantime and I will blog about them soon.

Also, I’ve updated my blog to the latest version of wordpress and that didn’t go very well. For example, as of the writing of this post the only page that is visible is the homepage. None of my previous posts are loading and I’m not sure if its because of the update to WP or if its my host (brinkster.com) I will work of fixing that first and then circle back around to share with you some of the exciting events of the past few months.

In any event, please hang in there. I will be back soon!

Sincerely

Kendall Schoenrock

I guess that you have considered the fact that Mr Schoenrock’s blog has become pink –right? I will tell you the story behind it. It actually goes back to the year of 2000. That is when it all started, in Tübingen, Germany. We were sharing host family during a language course. Mr. S is a very charming person but he has got lots of energy and he is used to get his will through. This was something that the mother in the family had some difficulties with accepting. That is where I came in to the picture, I was the “good” [swedish] girl that wanted to be friends with this American guy.

To make a long story short we became very good friends after going out together, seeing “The Gladiator” in German (yes the one with Russel Crowe!), winning an Irish pub quiz and not to forget watching the stars and trying to remember the names of the different constellations.

So why is the blog pink then? Well, I challenged Mr S and told him that only dead fishes swim with the sea current. Isn’t it interesting, Mr S is smart successful guy that has the world by his feet, still he is not comfortable with making his blog pink. What would other people think? If we compare the problem to not having food for the day we have reduced it to zero. So why is it so important for us to be uniform? We are not that afraid of climbing Kilimanjaro but we would never order milk if we went out with friends to an after work. When in life does this transformation start?! My point here is that the strength in a person lies within. If we always fight towards adjusting our personalities to others we will not make anyone satisfied. At the same time if we start thinking too much alike the people around us it means that someone else probably have thought that same thought – then we have reduced our ability to be creative. Uniqueness is about preserving the key features that we were given as newborns and learn to express and regulate them to maximize the outcome. I am saying that Mr S likes pink.

Pablo Picasso once said that your closest friends are mirrors reflecting your own favorite features. Mr S is one of my favorite mirrors but sometimes things go a little bit too easy for him. To exercise his brains a little bit I thought it would be good for him to do something that he would normally not – making his blog pink. In conclusion, my friend is not a dead fish and if you get the chance to work with him I would encourage you to continue this challenge and maybe your blog will be pink next time!
Miss Gospic

Soon you will get the answer to why Kendall´s blog has become pink. I know that you cannot wait but believe me it is worth waiting for…

-Katirina Gospic (Guest Blogger)

I’ve invited a dear friend of mine to be a guest blogger.  She asked me to turn my blog pink in her honor.  I will let her tell you that story….

Miss Gospic, I give you the floor.

-Kendall

Apple does it again. I could easily dive into how Apple is leader in innovation, but I would like to focus on a different aspect of Apples skill set. Watch this commercial and then I’ll get to the soul of my post.

There were times this past week after watching this commercial that I found myself unconsciously dropping a “la la la” here and there. What a catchy tune. This got me to track down Israeli pop star Yael Naim’s ‘New Soul’ and to plop down a buck over at my itunes account. As James Sullivan points out at spinner.com

And she’s the latest example of how quickly selling out went from being an unforgivable indiscretion to an admirable career move, the savvy underwriting of your still-righteous indie career. In ‘New Soul,’ the singer blithely finds herself “making every possible mistake.” Latching onto Apple’s latest product roll-out won’t be one of them.