Kate Storey:                       Welcome to the paperless productivity podcast, where we give you the tips, tricks, and know how, to solve your biggest workflow challenges, and bring greater productivity into your workplace everyday.

Technology has become such a standard part of so many of our lives. Sometimes it can be hard to remember a time without it. In fact, for today’s children, they have never known a time without it. Toddlers are swiping through nursery rhyme apps and iPads as easily as they’re flipping through pop up books. Going digital has benefited our lives in many different ways personally and professionally. And today we’re talking with Kevin Ledgister, image soft marketing manager, to count through the many forms of technology that we’re so very thankful for.

Kevin, it’s good to talk with you today.

Kevin Ledgister:                Yes. It’s great to be back.

Kate Storey:                       Great. Well tell me, so what are some of the areas of your life where you have seen a big improvement thanks to technology?

Kevin Ledgister:                Well, before I get into that, I’m going to tell you this little story. One of the first movies that I ever went to with my wife was The Hunt for Red October. And for those of you who are movie buffs and I’ve seen this movie back in the eighties, there was this great scene in there where the captain who is played by Sean Connery and his first officer, Sam Kneeler are in the captain’s quarters, and they’re actually defecting to United States and they’re dreaming about life, what it’s like in United States.

And the first officer tell of his one of the things on his bucket list, which is he wants to buy this RV and go from state to state. And that was his big dream and he looks at this company and says; “So I can go from state to state with no papers? Meeting identification not required? Like in every state as it was in the old Soviet Union?”

And the first … And the captain said; “No papers.” And I thought that was kind of interesting. And that line for whatever reason is always stuck out to me is this whole question of no papers and really living free. But it was kind of almost prophetic in terms of where we are today. And one of the things I’m very thankful for as being someone that travels quite a bit for my job, is the fact that I no longer had to deal with paper as I’m traveling, especially when it comes to by Air.

And you think about this, it used to be that, we have to have paper tickets, and we have to go up to the ticket counter, and have them print off a boarding passes for us, and we had to go through that whole rigamarole which just took up and ate up so much time, and now we’re doing all this stuff with mobile apps and check ins and if for some reason that you don’t like the seat that you got, you can just go right on your phone … Smartphone and change your seats or … Now with the system that we use in our company, One the great things is, when I book a reservation, it automatically sends me an outlook invite, that goes right on my counters, got my itinerary attached, so I get automatic reminders and it’s just such an automated process.

I used to work for another company where I was … When I started with the company and they said, “Get ready for your road warrior days.” And this is of course is back in the early 2000s. And they told me and says, “You’re going to get to the point where you’re going to show up at the ticket counter.” And the gate agent is going to ask you, “Where are you going today”, so they could verify the print off your boarding pass, and you’re going to draw a complete blank.

And I said; “There’s no way that that would ever happen.” And sure enough,