WOW… no deadlines… REALLY?
Most of my schools missed their print yearbook deadline, some by a lot. Deadlines are the most stress-producing issue for yearbook staff and especially for our beloved yearbook advisor.
When deadlines are missed, bad things happen. From sleepless nights as editors/advisors try to figure out how to catch up, to doing sloppy work as the staff tries to catch up, to leaving things out because there is just no time to catch up, to… LATE YEARBOOKS! Oh crap, none of this is good.
One of the reasons I had been visiting my schools every three weeks was to make sure my staff were staying on schedule, and doing the things that needed to be done. I would tell them that waiting until the last minute was like cramming for a test. While you may pass the test, you certainly weren’t going to get an A… or a B… maybe a C, probably a D… or worse. ‘Cramming’ a yearbook will result in a less-than-excellent yearbook, a yearbook that you will have for the rest of your life.
Well, my words of wisdom were not always heeded. The month of March/April (most print yearbook deadlines, depending on where in the nation a school is, are March or April 15th) was always complicated and fraught with anxiety and frustration.
YearBoxx changes all that. The ‘deadline’ (okay, YearBoxx kinda does have a deadline) is the day you want to distribute the yearbook. For example, if you want to distribute the book on June 1st, you will simply select the ‘Publish’ icon (only the Yearbook Advisor can do that) and within minutes, YearBoxx will be available.
But it gets better. Your YearBoxx can be worked on and edited forever (more on that in another blog). Maybe the Prom happens on June 12th (the reason it doesn’t get into most yearbooks)? The yearbook staff simply needs to build the section in YearBoxx Create, the drag & drop build software (more on that in another blog), hit the save icon and it instantly is pushed into everybody’s yearbook, just like that.
Maybe Graduation is on June 24th (the reason it doesn’t get into most yearbooks)? Well, the same steps apply. YearBoxx was specifically designed to have Prom and Graduation pushed into it post-distribution.
It can be argued that Graduation is the most important day of the year, the day everyone has been working towards for four years (or two years for our Junior High friends or 8 years for our Elementary School students). It can be argued that the Prom is the most fun event of the year. Both of these events are FULL of special memories, how tragic it is to not have them represented in your yearbook.
Of course, any other end-of-year event can be added to YearBoxx post distribution. Maybe a spring barbeque, maybe the baseball team won the championship… the spring is full of wonderful events and parties and memories. YearBoxx will preserve ALL of them, from the first day of school to the last day of school, and, AFTER the last day of school if something special happens post-graduation.
This is what a Next Generation Yearbook can do!
