Watching Walsworth reps in a poodle skirts.
Listening to a kid in a penguin suit do Born to Be Wild in the lip sync contest.
It’s another Camp Orlando summer yearbook workshop.
It’s another Dow and Becky Tate anniversary.
It’s how we roll.

The energy bursting from the 400 Florida yearbook students at this workshop is always impressive. You gotta love any workshop that starts off the Yearbook Forever theme with senior pictures of its instructors with Dorothy haircuts of the 70s and mullets of the 80s. My ruffles and bowtie pic was the sweetest.

And you gotta love that the energy carried over into the classroom. Love when kids walk in with theme ideas they’ve already talked through. Tomorrow’s a good refining day.

Tuesday was the second full day at Walsworth’s Galveston workshop. With some hard work, the 2011 themes are starting to come together. It is great to see so many new yearbookers wanting to create a better book.

I love seeing kids get excited about the year ahead and creating the best yearbook their school has ever seen.

If you ever get down to Galveston, be sure to visit Gaido’s. Awesome fresh Gulf Shrimp since 1911.

It’s always amazing to me to watch the progress that yearbook kids make during a summer workshop.

We instructors were pretty honest with our opinions of the themes presented to us this weekend at the Sonoma, Calif., yearbook camp. What I saw the various staffs working on today was an incredible improvement.

I ♥ yearbook nerds.

It is exciting to see the 2011 themes emerge as kids started their yearbooks at the Sonoma workshop. We tried something new this year where the staffs consulted with all three instructors at the same time to get theme feedback before developing it. As expected we offered varying opinions which provided lots of food for thought. Can’t wait to see what the final theme packets will look like.

So far most staffs are seeking to personalize their books more, and the themes are reflecting that. We are seeing more interest in covering as many students as possible and in covering not just the superstars but everyone.

The night’s entertainment on Saturday were professional break dancers who have performed on “Dancing With the Stars” and “So You Think you Can Dance.” It’s always nice to have a little fun mixed in with the hard work at these workshops.

Summer yearbook thoughts from the road, with a first stop at Walsworth’s yearbook camp in Sonoma, Calif., on Friday and Saturday.

After some fun lead by Walsworth area sales manager Howard Dusek that emphasized the importance of digging deep through interviews to find the unique stories on campus, we got down to the challenge of finding and perfecting that perfect theme/concept to drive the creation of each school’s 2011 yearbook.

Susan Massy gave a presentation on theme and then the staffs broke off to do group brainstorming. Then we gathered back for presentations on coverage by me, and photography by Crystal Kazmierski. From the engaged responses I got, I could tell this was going to be a great workshop.

After dinner we met for a two-hour block in our individual classes. It was instantly clear that my editors and advisers were really taking the task of creating the 2011 book seriously. It will definitely be a great year for them and I sense the 2011 editions will be their best books ever.

Remember this is Sonoma in the heart of the Napa/Sonoma wine country, so everything at California State University, Sonoma is named after things to do with wine and the wine industry.

Each school had five minutes to pitch their theme to us and we were able to give them lots of praise and constructive criticism. A total of 13 schools presented in that hour and a half time slot. Some themes were great and others needed more work, but each school was engaged in and excited about the creative process they were in.

I think this is the best shape these schools have been in this early in the workshop. We will have to see where it all goes.

After that session there was an adviser mixer for those who weren’t too exhausted from a day of driving and hard yearbook creativity!

Looking forward to seeing what today will bring.

So, popular social networking website Facebook was in the news this week when reports indicated that there were now approximately 500 million active users on Facebook each month.

That’s a pretty impressive number. And it gives us a good chance to remind you of a message that you’ve heard on this website before – that Facebook can be a very useful tool for yearbook staffs in generating a buzz about the book and building awareness about the product.

This article from the Idea File area outlines how some yearbook staffs are using Facebook, and includes a link to Walsworth’s e-book Promoting Your Yearbook in the Facebook Era, which tells you everything you need to know on how to set up a Facebook Fan Page.

Walsworth’s own Fan Page on Facebook can be found at facebook.com/yearbooks.

Here’s an interesting article from the Fort Madison Daily Democrat in Iowa. A 1912 Lawrence College yearbook was recently discovered at a senior living facility in Fort Madison.

The yearbook belonged to Carl Nelson, one of the area’s more historical figures for the more than 30 years that he taught music and marching band in the Fort Madison public school system.

Nelson’s old yearbook has given the community a chance to fondly remember and honor the former educator. Now, those at the Kensington home where the yearbook was found are trying to track down Nelson’s family to rightfully give them the book.

New Jersey librarian Nancy Janow has a passion for yearbooks.

Janow has lived in South Orange for the past 25 years, and as she told the Maplewood Patch newspaper this week, she has been collecting yearbooks from local schools for the past 15 years.

She now has more than 50 yearbooks, most of them from Maplewood’s Columbia High School, that date back as far as 1915. As Janow puts it, the historical collection gives her family an “endless source of fun and amusement.”

“I love the old ones,”Janow told the Patch. “Because they show how much the town has changed. You can watch the demographics change, ethnically, economically and in terms of size.”

Here’s a fun link to check out. The Picture Show blog on the NPR website recently ran a post and started a gallery on the history of yearbooks.

NPR traces back the origins of yearbooks to photographer George Warren in the mid-1800s.

The National Museum of American History still has one of Warren’s early yearbooks, from Rutgers University in 1860.

Take a look at NPR’s image gallery, and you can get a glimpse of what yearbook photos looked like back in the day.

You might think summer would be a slow time for yearbooks, but one look around Twitter will show you otherwise! People are still reading. Take a look…

@amyy96_: I just looked at my past yearbooks, all my yearbooks from Grade 3 to now. They brought tears to my eyes, especially my Grade 7 yearbook.

@JA_PRiiNC3sZ: Just found my HS Yearbook. Pure coincidence. Def cried re-reading the heartfelt comments! #softee lol

@payprbackwriter: My fashion sense could best be described as “1985 Chess Club Nerd.” I checked my HS yearbook, and I am wearing the exact same clothes.

@itsMELIbish: Going through old yearbooks with @itsxtinabish haha she says I never dated a cute guy before, yes i have (: junior year hahahaha

@shahirmuaz: Looking thru the jc yearbooks. As it cliche as it may be, I wish I could turn back time. Sighhh