By Kimberly Zapata
As we all know, switching The Point to an online-only format has been quite the change. In many respects, this switch was inevitable; the internet is the “way of the future,” though the future has been here for quite some time. But this does not mean many of us—myself included—do not miss the way things were: the touch and feel of freshly printed paper, the glossy cover that slid beneath our fingertips as we flipped through each and every page, and that one piece of mail that made the day better (you know, that something special that wasn’t a bill or brochure for office supplies). So it is in these moments of nostalgia that feedback—like that from Randall Martinez—is all the more important.
Randall is from a small town in Nebraska. Having lived in major metropolitan areas for the last 17 years—and having never been to Nebraska—I can only speculate what “small town” means. What I know it means for Randall is that, until recently, Randall was never exposed to an issue of The Point. However, once The Point became a fully-online APP publication, Randall took note. He contacted Elayne Angel in April, commenting on her President’s Corner:
“This is really cool that they [the issues of The Point] are available online. I [have] never seen an issue of The Point until now. Thanks from Nebraska.”
As simple a gesture as this comment was, it means a lot not only to myself, Elayne Angel, Kendra Jane, Jim Ward, Brian Skellie, and the entire Point team, but to our community as a whole. In this digital age we often think of ourselves as closer than ever before, but we’ve also become lulled into a false sense of security that everyone—everywhere—knows what we are thinking and doing at all times. We tend to forget how very big this world is, and how very small we are. While the internet helps to bridge this gap—what could possibly help us achieve our mission of the “dissemination of information about body piercing” better—notes from Randall remind us just how far we have come, as an organization and piercing family, and how far we have to go.
So while it’s okay to feel nostalgic (hell, that is one reason we will be publishing an annual “Best of the Best” anthology), to quote Dolores Umbridge—”progress for progress’s sake must be discouraged,” but progress for the sake of change—change like Randall and others have no doubt experienced—is worth each and every painful step. So sit back and enjoy this issue of The Point, whether you are reading it from a computer screen in your shop, the comfort of your home, or your cellphone, laptop, or e-reader at the 2013 APP Annual Conference and Exposition.
