I don’t know if everyone feels this way, but sometimes I feel like at work I am on my own little island. At Nelson-Jameson, I work on marketing items such as catalog, flyers and newsletters. So, my island is often surrounded by things such as spelling and obscure grammar rules about hyphens and commas.

Last week I got to spend a few hours away from my island…..to listen to a couple of our vendors talk about their companies and new product initiatives. While I had anticipated the meetings would be interesting…I didn’t realize how much they might actually help me do my job.

Getting to learn more about and touch some of the products that I had just written about for the upcoming New Products Catalog really helped inspire different ways to write the text and design the products on the page. Hopefully, those experiences and others like it will help me do a better job of connecting with our customers through my writing and promotional materials.

It makes me think that it does us all a little good once and awhile to take our blinders off for our specific tasks in our companies, step off the island and soak up a little information. If nothing else, it is a refreshing break from the normal, every day. But, in some cases, it might actually help us all understand the big picture and do a better job overall.  Thanks to Ann from Rice Lake Weighing Systems and Edwin from Brady who helped me see a little beyond my normal scope for the day!

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