April 9^th 2014

Good morning team

As I sit here this morning and attempt to chronicle the events and emotions of the passed 12 hours I am at a loss.  At 8:10 PM Monday April 8^th our HQ [head quarters] began to burn.  By 10 PM Monday April 8^th the entire building that housed our office and warehouse was reduced to black smoldering embers.  None of us were in the building. Thank God

 For those of you who remained close to the past year’s efforts you know that we had taken the foundation of our new vision to a tangible reality and had begun to build on that reality.  I was holding back with my “state of the union” email until the pending deals had been finalized.  Last nights circumstances altered those plans.

 What WAS LOST? All tangible records, equipment and media gathered and produced during the past years.  Many of our personal treasures collected to display and value our career accomplishments have been taken from us.  In summation it is a devastating emotion hit.

 What WASN’T LOST? All that lives on the site at Ferro Productions.com.  All the thousands of hours of research and development that resides on many of our personal computers and BaseCamp.  The strategic relationships we have developed and all of the pending opportunities we have identified.

 Interestingly, during the week prior I found myself in deep contemplation regarding Ferro City, NEVER the concept or the VALUE of the concept, those are unmovable facts. It had more to do with the collective human desire to stay on task.  I had reached a crossroad. I was wrestling with whether I could or wanted to continue to push through the never ending high and lows, which I have faced since day one. This journey has been one of the most challenging leadership tasks of my life.  Many times I felt I was leading in the black of night with no sense of forward or backward, no up or down but always knew the only way out was to keep moving. Even when the people I was leading faded in the darkness I felt compelled to keep moving.

 Last night standing with my family / biz partners (which includes Swen) in the pouring rain watching the flames rip through our history, I flashed back several years ago to a table in a beach house in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ.  There sat Swen, Frank, Chapmen and myself discussing sketches I had done revealing the rough images of a new initiative called Ferro City.   Those sketches that were now black chard embers.

Was this the sign I was looking for?  “STOP before somebody gets really hurt !” “How much more bullshit will you deal with?” How much more of an obvious sign does HE have to give me before I hear the message?

 Through these events I am left with only one conclusion, …. FUCK THAT !!! ITS DONE WHEN I SAY ITS DONE!  As long as there is ONE standing there is A chance and A chance is all I’ve ever asked for… “IS THAT ALL YOU GOT !!?? BRING IT MOTHER FUCKER …. BRING IT.”

 As for the SIGN? It truly was a SIGN .. a MESSAGE.. It was to remind me that it’s not about the STUFF we collect.  It’s about the STUFF we carry inside, the STUFF that makes us who we are and what we believe in…

 See you all at work soon …

 Stay tuned as the Phoenix rises from the ashes 

Ciao

joe

As the night burned on I felt my professional instincts creeping forward.  We are a team of elite professionals accustom to adjusting in an instant to dramatic changes in a well-structured plan.  The time had come to apply those skills and talents to our company’s future.  Of most importance, no was hurt.  Given that, we had the strongest foundation from which to build.  What was lost … was lost.  What we lost was STUFF.  What we still had was the core of our success, OUR TEAM.  What we needed was a NEW PLAN.  A plan that was framed from the finest hardened steel forged in blazing inferno in front of us.

We walked from the site knowing we were entering a new era for our company.  A meeting was set for the following morning at my residence.  It included both our creative and managerial leadership teams.

 DAY 2 Morning

As each member of our team arrived we went through the expected emotions from disbelief to sarcastic dark humor (Dark Humor is traditionally a proven coping mechanism of the Ferro Productions crew.) As soon as the meeting began it felt like a great weight was lifted. We were in a familiar place. Not physically, as that would have been impossible as the fire has taken that “place” away.  What was immediately familiar was the fact that regardless of all factors Ferro was once again in our all to familiar team production meeting.  This time, the difference being WE LITERALLY had to produce and REPRODUCE ourselves.  At that moment, wee had risen above the tragedy.  We were back in control of our destiny and our future looked bright.

Task one was to do a “visual memory” inventory of our office, edit suites and equipment storage.  I say visual memory inventory because lost to fire were all our inventory records, pins and passwords to offsite cloud backups.  Rather then spend precious time hunting down alternate access to those accounts we opted to rely on our talents of visualization.  It was amazing the level of detail we were able to recall.  Not only did we identify critical and non-critical inventory but we were able to lay out a map of their exact placement of nearly every item found in the rooms.  We literally created a detailed drawing of our facility including wall, ceiling, floor and all elements within.

From that drawing we created an inventory of all items lost.  At that point we adjusted our sites to what was spared by the fire.  Specifically, these would be items housed offsite or residing on offsite severs.  The following is the list of procedures created at that meeting to establish our ground zero solutions:

• ·       Timeline of existing project deliverables.
• ·       Equipment necessary to complete those deliverables
• ·       How can we acquire that necessary equipment
  • o   Rent
  • o   Purchase
  • o   Borrow
  • ·       Identify new short term space opportunities
    • o   Rent
    • o   Borrow
    • ·       What aspects of projects could be sub’d out to other production houses if necessary.
    • ·       Reach out to all clients and explain our circumstances giving assurances that we will fulfill all our obligations with no loss of quality or deadlines.
    • ·       Begin to recreate whatever tangible items we needed for the short term
    • ·       Assign tasks and leadership to tasks. Each reportable to all but empowered to make decisions autonomously.
    • ·       Contact insurance. Get settlement in motion
    • ·       Identify options for infusion of capitol
    • ·       Get immediate access to the building to search and rescue whatever possible

 These action items set the team in motion doing what we do best, create and accomplish. It also broke us from walking the unproductive path to no where “why me… all is lost..”.

 SEARCH AND RECOVER

In the next writing I will share the “Dig” and the miraculous finds that were buried among the smoldering ash and embers.