George Memorial, there it is.
A lot of people used to hang out on these lawns having lunches. Not anymore.
Its all changed now. I don't even see the squirrels anymore. People use to feed the
squirrels out of their hands and they're gone.
Even the squirrels are gone.
I kind of like George. He paid my salary for 30 years. It was a great job. Great company.
Now its just, I don't know...not so great anymore.
I worked in building 58 when I first started here, film finishing. And then I became a
mechanic there, worked there about 19 years and then went to a coding machine. Building 29.
We worked either 7-to-3, 3-to-11 or 11- to-7 in the morning. Switched every week.
You go in and just work. It was a good job. Paid good money. It was good. Everything was good.
To me it was easy. When you get out of high school you get a job and you're pretty much set for life.
I bought a house after two years at Kodak, so I lived on my own there. Probably 23 years old
when I bought my first house, and then five years later I got married, started raising kids.
When I got hired at Kodak I thought I was going to work one job and then that would be it.
I would retire from Kodak like my father did, but everything's changed.
I'm interested in this Kodak pizza. What is that?
Uh its a pizza with Italian sausage, roasted red peppers, basil and your mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce.
Oh ok. Is it red and yellow?
Is it red and yellow? Yes!
Ok, there it is!
It says Kodak right in the middle of it.
I'll take one of those.
Thanks a lot guys.
Do they serve a Koda-quiri?
Wouldn't surprise me if they did.
When I first came, I couldn't get over this place. I mean first of all, there was
a lot of people at work and I remember most people that worked at Kodak for
most of their lives. And I'll tell you it was unusual to ever know anybody who
actually left the company voluntarily.
They used to interview the outgoing people.
Yeah, they wanted to know what did we do wrong. I mean nobody left.
Our job was to say, "whats the future?" And we pointed out in many cases
exactly what it was. Its just the company could not get its head around it.
I built the first digital camera and playback system and I demonstrated it to Kodak
management in 1976. I could walk into a conference room, take available light photos
and show it to them to a TV set right there. No film, no paper.
They didn't ask me how, they asked me why. Why would you want to do that? Why would
anybody want to look at that picture on a television set? Whats an electronic photo
album going to look like? There's no personal computers around, right?
They didn't even think people would ever want it because think about it prints were everything.
That's how you kept your memories, with prints.
You know digital changed everything. Digital changed how people, you know, took pictures,
how they used them and what they did with them.
And how they appreciated them, how customers used them. That really changed.
In a way that was uncomfortable for Kodak. Hundred years, what is important?
Permanence, reliability, image quality. Right? And all of a sudden now imaging is not that at all.
Its a casual conversation that you're sharing. Its a throw away thing. Its an experience, right.
Thats a total redefinition of a fundamental thing that we used to do. And we couldn't,
Kodak couldn't react because the profit was in the old way of thinking about it.
I worked on pretty much every major consumer electronic product that
people use today, you know, other than the computer.
I remember him, I vividly remember you coming home and saying, "do you think
it would work if we put a camera on phones? Do you think people would like that?"
Because Kodak was thinking about doing that. And even then I was like I don't know if I would
want to pull out my phone and take a picture, but my God who doesn't use that as their
main camera now, and when you were on that MC3 project it was the first ipod. It took
pictures, it took video and you played music on it. And you were working on it and it launched
and they told you they were going to kill it before they even looked at the sales. And
a year later Apple launches the iPod. They were so close, so many times. They just, it was short
term results versus the long term growth.
This is uh the old Kodak park. Business park. A lot of buildings imploded right here, so
not as many buildings as once stood here.
In a town like Rochester which was lost its main productive base with the demise of Kodak.
There is also the demise of the local service jobs. Construction jobs are gone.
Retail jobs are declining. And everything else in the local economy is shrinking due to
the demise of what used to be their main engine.
There is no question that the demise of Kodak and the decline of Rochester has to do with
new technologies. Kodak was slow at embracing digital photography and this new technology
essentially disrupted its business success.
There is also no question that the epicenter of the tech boom is San Francisco.
The San Francisco labor market is one of the strongest right now in the US.
San Francisco county has reached the top employment in its history.
The main driver of the strength of the labor market in San Francisco is of course the tech sector.
I've been shooting since I was about six years old. I moved here in 2009 with about 40 bucks
and I ended up working in Silicon Valley for several years.
When Instagram came out I was in tech and for me personally Instagram ended up being a little
bit of gateway for me back into photography. So I quit my job in April of 2013 with the hopes
of being a photographer full-time. And I had a hunch that there was a market in Silicon Valley
that no one had really looked at yet. That being, branding and photography in tech.
Hi! How are you? I'm Helena.
Enrico, very nice to meet you. So nice to meet you.
Thanks for coming! Yes, I'm so glad we get to do this.
And what fraction of your clients is from the valley or from...
99%
Yeah, they're all from tech.
There's this whole new ecosystem that didn't even exist two years ago which is wild.
Its exciting and also kind of terrifying.
And whats fascinating that it includes jobs that are very, very far from that like an artist
job like yours or the person who was serving us lunch in the restaurant.
Jobs that didn't exist.
Including jobs that didn't exist.
Yeah, I think, I mean it will be really interesting to see what happens in the
next 2-to-5 years, even the next year. To see what new jobs are created and what new jobs
are lost and I think as a person on the fringes all I can do is just watch it like a hawk.
I think we are into the new economy and the new economy is one that is much more
driven by technological change, and I think people are gonna have to move around
a lot more in their jobs and may even, maybe, even in their careers.
These are trends that are very strong and what it means is rapid change, uncertainty and impermanence.
Julia, ready to go hun? Lets roll.
Bye hun, have a good day. You too.
I work for Rochester Regional Health System now. I work as a project manager and
I'm managing large implementations of electronic medical records.
Bye sweetie, you have a good day. Love you.
We're switching over basically from paper systems to electronic and I'm helping to
um, roll out these new programs.
Its my life after Kodak.
You're welcome. Very nice seeing you guys. As always.
Terry assists the customers and pretty much anything they need. Terry is pretty
much in perpetual motion. He has like the best work ethic ever. He's constantly moving.
Anyone on there?
Copy. 813. 8-1-3.
Are you coming in?
Sometimes Terry is the difference between how comfortable your grandmother is
when she's going in for bypass surgery and if she's uneasy when they see a face
like Terry's and he's smiling and he's friendly, it puts them at ease as they go
into whats a lot of times a difficult situation.
I'm much happier doing this job than Kodak but the money...its a trade-off.
You know, the money was better at Kodak but this is a more rewarding job. Its a lot,
you know, you're helping people. Feel good at the end of the day.
Where to?
I really care for people. You know and I enjoy helping them.
5th Floor. Now do you want to pile all this into a wheelchair?
I think employment has changed because people can't predict the stability of their career,
let alone their job.
I gotcha. That's my favorite Yankee fan.
And its what makes it frustrating for people because people actually like certainty and
they'd rather have permanent jobs. Especially over the age of 35, 40. They want a 9-to-5 job
with benefits that they know is going to be there tomorrow. And thats not America today,
thats America from the 1950s. Its been changing gradually and its accelerated in
the last 15-20 years.
I think that at the end of the day this is such an exciting time for people.
Like the economy is changing so much especially in this city and if you are hungry
to learn and you're ready to work your butt off and you're ready to play by no
ones rule book but your own, I think you can just make it work.
That's a very optimistic view. I know!
Here, you can sit down. I gotcha.
Yeah, I don't think I'll ever get back to Kodak money but I believe everything happens for a reason.
Here we'll get you inside where its warm.
But it was good while it lasted, I'll say that. It was good.