Remember, with only minor, obvious or stated exception, Caren created everything you see by hand.
Chapter 1. Starting Off
When Reboot Technology's Caren Sandusky was as young as her son (Ethan), she was well into drawing and making all kinds of things. By the age of 7, she was interested in business so her mother helped her with a Kool-Aid stand. Next she started making candles to sell. Later she wove baskets and after that she made potted plants to sell in the neighborhood. When her older brother Phil starting selling his paintings, Caren studied photography and film making and got busy working to build a media production business from that.
Commercial photography, making and selling camera equipment, would be Caren's first real business that would to carry her into adulthood.
2. Helping Out
Starting in school, Caren enjoys building sets and props, this was for a dance recital.
Caren designs and makes, singular or in quantity, things that can improve lives, here are some ball-park cupholders.
3. Space Shuttle
Courtesy NASA
In 1981 Caren worked with Marty Hamrick and others doing TV news photography.
Since the Shuttle Transport System had a very explosive new propulsion system, the media photog-raphers had to cover the launch from over two miles away.
At this distance, the Shuttle could not be photographed and tracked into space (close up) by conventional cameras and lens. Caren was asked to solve this problem and did so by constructing a photographic tracking system. She was given huge acclaim by NASA and even more from fellow media for building from scratch the most powerful camera system of it's kind ever created.
4. Home Improvement
Caren enjoys using items of history or from her industry to make interior design options for her home. Here is a par-can light and tripod shelving.
Among many home improve-ments, Caren created vertical and other storage solutions to save work and space. This clothes basket rack really helped with the considerable laundry needs of her five plus kids.
5. Film & Video Production
Caren Sandusky is a classic project entrepreneur. At age 14 she started her photography business with an old camera. She made money, bought newer cameras, made more money, bought bigger cameras and before long she had built a premier TV production company with a great staff.
Excalibur Productions of Florida, now doing business as Reboot Technology, is one of the longest continuously running media productions companies in North America. Caren Sandusky and her associates built an innovative, award winning business able to pivot with the changing times. It is important to say here that Caren could not have done what she did without the help of V. Martin Hamrick, Carlos C. Rodriguez, Grant Les Alford, Robert Fife, Marc Brian, Mark Sandusky, Pat McCaskill, Wade Cox, Caren's family and too many other great people to mention, "Thanks to all of you!"
6. Media Innovation
Long before anyone thought of small vehicle billboards and wraps, Caren Sandusky proposed a sign material and system to be used on cars, vans and trucks. She painted the Video Van (and car) completely by hand. Whenever these vehicles were not on the job, she had her staff park them in high visibility locations to bring in more clients, so cool, so awesome, so effective!
7. Production Innovation
Caren built her company in Jacksonville Florida. It's a great place to live but didn't have any motion picture equipment support facilities. In order to do serious production projects (like this TV pilot), Caren had to create from scratch equipment like this mini-crane track dolly. As with so many of her inventions, this system provided improvements on traditional equipment like Hollywood (brand) Dollys, and was used for many years supporting the industry in Northeast Florida.
8. Media Transfer Innovation
In deference to companies that currently provide the service of converting old photographs, films and videos to digital media:
Caren Sandusky is among a handful of innovators that actually created that industry by building her first telecine in 1979. She and her associates have served millions of customers world wide for over 40 years. Much of the equipment and all of the materials were made by her, from scratch .
9. Educational Innovation
Art by Marc Brian
As a producer, director, editor and more, Caren Sandusky and her associates have won many awards, creating new standards of quality, affordable and effective educational and training media for schools and businesses world wide.
10. Innovative Staging
Have stage will travel. Before the day of virtual TV produc- tion sets, a stage had to be built and disposed of for each project. Caren Sandusky thought this was crazy so she designed and built a portable stage with support crane that could be dismantled, transported and reassembled in a matter of hours. This stage served numerous broadcast clients for many years.
11. Animation Innovation
Art by Mark Sandusky
Caren and her brother Mark created a low cost cel animation system that put quality animated TV commercials, as good as anything in Hollywood, into the price range of local ad markets.
12. Innovative Sociology
Caren and her spouse adopted a seriously disabled child that was said by the govern-ment to require institutionalization for life. This did not sit well with them so Caren set about studying the issues and thinking outside the box. Though considered crazy at first, the entire board of directors of a highly respected facility approved her suggested method of treatment, not only for her child but others as well.
13. Lighting Solutions
In support of quality media production in low budget markets, Caren Sandusky has invented and developed many innovative new forms of cinema lighting. The system shown here was created for a church with no easy access to the ceiling to adjust the theatrical lighting.
14. Orthopedic Innovation
An orthopedic patient couldn't afford the prescribed medical device needed for his rehab. Caren created this very effective prosthetic by prescrip-tion to replace the lost muscle function for this patient that needed to return to work.
15. Innovative Promotions
Caren Sandusky bought two failed production companies and built five from the ground up; including Excalibur Productions, American Media Transfer, American Trans World Media and Reboot Technology. Since she worked with a number of great people, she avoided any branding using only her name.
Caren's companies were by definition small businesses. Very small. But, to compete internationally, she created impressive promotional, sales, and operation materials. Some of this art was created by Marc Brian and Mark Sandusky but the rest the art including photo- graphy, photo processing, layout, typesetting and actual printing was done mostly by Caren Sandusky herself.
16. Innovative Packaging
Through her production companies, Caren Sandusky recorded and distributed hundreds of thousands of video tapes and later DVDs. Many of these required custom made packaging for each separate product. This was enormously wasteful of resources. As a solution, Caren designed a plastic video case with a clear cover over the outside surface. With this, a custom printed paper page or sleeve could be inserted inside to make the whole package appear custom made. This product went on to become one of the most produced plastic shipping and storage containers of all time. Billions have been used worldwide for decades.
17. 911 Innovation
Post 911, even ordinary mail was no longer considered safe. Caren invented and developed clear plastic #10 business envelopes for mailouts. These envelopes allowed the recipients to inspect the contents before opening. It took the US Mail a while to accept them but they were a good solution for security concerns.
18. Innovative Forensics
Historically, local media businesses don't last very long, markets change too fast. Caren Sandusky has stayed in business longer than any other in her market by pivoting. When the broadcast TV market dried up, Caren developed new and creative markets of business including producing forensic media used in court.
Ahead of the rest, Caren created new methods of producing digital forensic media to make it even more successful in Court. Her techniques in producing pre-construction media has saved governments at all levels countless millions in fraudulent damage claims for decades.
19. Digital Media Innovation
Art by Marc Brian
The difference between the largest media production companies in the world and the small ones, is often little more than the access to certain tools. Caren Sandusky lived and worked in a market too small to afford things like teleprompters for modest media projects. She dealt with this as she always does by creating what she couldn't buy; and as usual, what she made was better than what could be bought at any price. What you see here (along with her custom made lighting units) is her third generation of broadcast teleprompters which started 35 years ago.
20. Ergonomic Innovation
In business and industry, far too often plans are implemented without enough consideration on how humans behave and react to them. Caren Sandusky has created and developed solutions that save space, time, costs and prevent injuries to people.
Another one of Caren's great discoveries had to do with the ordinary task of a grocery cashier. When a cashier is placing produce items on a scale, the designers of the software decided that it would only take a prescribed amount of time to put the items on the scale and no more. At a certain set point in time, the scale's measurement would be determined allowing no changes. For decades, grocery retailers have lost countless millions in shrink (lost product not sold) because the behavior of the cashier was not adequately considered. Here you see just a few of numerous examples showing how product was sold based on a weight far less than reality. One of the worst shrink losses in retail history, corporate management was very resistant to accepting this from Caren at first, but finally did so, saving them millions of dollars every year.
The actual weight is in green.
The weight being charged for is either in or above the blue bar. So much was lost.
21. Innovative Climate Control
There is much competition in the arena of ideas and sadly always those that prefer to steal great ideas over creating their own. Inasmuch this web site is limited in the art (inventions) it can show to stay in compliance with intellectual property laws and good common sense.
Caren Sandusky's art shown here, was found to be patented by others, inefficient and unmarketable. However, Caren's new designs are very original, extremely efficient and quite marketable.
Caren has incredible new ceiling fan designs and improvements.
Ceiling fan air conditioning;
Will be the way of the future thanks to Caren's improvements on the early designs.
Caren has enough new product designs to add 50% more options to the AC market and double that of the ceiling fan market. And, even better these new creations are sustainably designed to save energy, conserve resources, improve health and provide numerous new brands to revive two out dated tired old industries. See our Join Our Future page for more info.
22. Vehicle Innovation
Caren Sandusky has long believed that it was crazy to expend the fossil fuel energy of moving 4000 pounds of steel at high speeds just to transport one or two people around. Caren started making electric toy cars in her childhood; in the last few decades she has pushed her research and development in amazing directions. The first motor-in-wheel electric car was built over 130 years ago, here you see only a very small sampling of Caren's R & D in this area.
Early in her R & D days, Caren took several ideas (not shown) to a product development and marketing company. They loved them but said the ideas would never fly because the United Auto Workers didn't like change. Advance the clock, and now Caren's ideas are used by all car makers. Advance the clock further, and now Caren is developing Pivotal Power (not shown due to intellectual property laws), a brand of energy saving, sustainable, ultra safe, completely unique, hybrid electric vehicles, semi tractor designs and vehicle safety systems.
(Remember, everything you see was drawn and made by the mind and hands of Caren Sandusky.)
23. Aviation Innovation
The future of manned aviation is in air taxi services. Coming from an aviation family, Caren Sandusky has worked most of her life coming up with new aircraft designs and features. The art shown here is Caren's Mockingbird VTOL air taxi design and the Mocking Chick, a fully functioning wind tunnel model.
For human flight to reach its full potential, vertical take off or landing (VTOL) aircraft, must be the standard rather than the exception. The AV-8 Harrier is the first non-rotor military VTOL that was widely used. General aviation wanting a civilian version, Caren's Highly Efficient and Maneuverable (HEM) VTOL G.A. X-Plane Mockingbird design (shown here) was introduced at the largest air show in the world to over 200,000 approving aviators. Caren's latest work is on a sustainable hybrid electric multi-rotor (not shown) that uses a revolutionary new rotor design that will double the cruising speed and distance of future electric urban air taxi vehicles.
24. Future Innovation
Thank you for taking this brief look at some of Caren Sandusky's creative history. Caren is a problem solver and inventor of extraordinary ability. The things that she has created so far (that you've seen here), pail in comparison to what she is working on now: Everything from incredible improvements to old products and ways of doing things to completely new systems and products never thought of before. The Join Our Future page will show how you can be a part of her efforts to bring exciting new sustainable businesses, ideas and products to world markets, including:
Reboot Technology's
Sustainable Safety Clothes and Rim Masks(TM), revolutionary new construction designs and styles for clothing and medical face masks that with improve health, safety and convenience for billions worldwide;
Logistical Alerts (TM), Transport TeleCom System, a new com-munication industry that will also save thousands of lives every year;
Pivotal Power(TM), Electric Cars, Trucks & Semi Tractors, completely original new designs for electric vehicles, semi tractors and safety systems for all motor vehicles;
Ambient Air, Sustainable Air-Conditioning, the world's first real Green Tech indoor/outdoor climate control;
Fast Food Grocery Items, inventive new food and food storage products;
Convenience Shelving, Furnishings and Safety Doors, home and office improvements that increase access for the elderly and disabled, restricts access for children, and saves lives;
The Pickett Hybrid Vehicular Engine, a new formula engine design that will produce twice the torque using half the fuel;
Mockingbird & Responder(TM) Hybrid VTOL Aircraft, new aircraft designs for Advanced (& Urban) Air Mobility air taxi services;
And so much more!