Article

Who's Who: Rick Rommel

Devoted to work and family, Rick Rommel also enjoys helping consumers preserve memories with Kodak's photo-imaging kiosks.

February 27, 2002

Few moves within the continental United States are as challenging, climate-wise, as the one from perpetually warm southern California to the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, where conditions are borderline Arctic for half the year.

But in May of 1999, Rick Rommel and his family made the move, leaving a place known for perpetual sunshine to one more likely to see snowfall records. Rommel accepted the position of director of digital retails systems for Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, N.Y., where he develops retail photo solutions utilizing kiosks.

"What's the point in making small lifestyle changes," said Rommel, a native southern Californian. "When you go big - go big."

Instead of sandy beaches and warm sunshine, Rommel now spends six months a year dealing with blizzards and temperatures cold enough to turn a pastel Hawaiian shirt blue. But Rommel is not dismissive of the Finger Lakes region. Instead, he revels in the opportunities for quality family time it gives him, his wife of 14 years Monica, their ten-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter.

"Rochester is a remarkably family-oriented place," said the 41-year-old Rommel. "For people in big cities, they just don't understand it until they move here. There's lots of little festivals and events. For homecoming you don't have a dance for the high schoolers, you have a full-on parade. It's an interesting atmosphere."

The connection with people is important to Rommel, whose previous position at North Communications Inc. in Marina Del Ray, Calif., allowed him to develop customer-service solutions. An engineer by trade, Rommel has the touch for making people happy. And that makes Rommel happy.

"He's an engineer who can do structure, be creative, walk, talk, and chew gum at the same time - all while being a solid citizen and team player," said Paul Kennedy, the former president of North Communications and now president of Vivometrics in nearby Ventura. "He was a pleasure to work with and was willing to step into the unknown without blinking."

Do-it-yourself

At Kodak, Rommel is in charge of one of the largest retail kiosk projects in the industry, the deployment of more than 18,000 kiosks in the United States. Rommel said the company has installed 35,000 photo kiosks worldwide.

Eastman Kodak Co.'s Rick Rommel has not looked back since moving from southern California to upstate New York in 1999.

The kiosk program's primary function is photo development and reproduction. The development side is a work in progress, as the company expands the kiosk's features.

In February, the company debuted its open architecture Digital Lab Manager System. The system can be custom-fitted to allow photofinishing stores the option of delivering digital-quality photos within an hour.

The company's Picture Maker kiosk allows customers to print copies of photos. Rommel takes pride in the program because of the interaction it creates between the customer and Kodak.

"Consumers have found it to be a wonderful device," Rommel said. "They get to take an old photo they love to the kiosks, edit it, crop it, get rid of the old boyfriend they don't want to remember, and take home an eight by ten that looks like a gift."

During fiscal year 2000, Kodak reported nearly $14 billion in sales. The consumer imaging division worldwide delivered more than half that total, $7.4 billion.

This does compute

Rommel has always had an interest in computers and technology. In 1986, he received a master's degree in computer science from Loyola Marymount, where four years earlier he earned a physics degree.

Rommel's interest in the Internet and in consumer quality issues brought him to North in 1994.

"The thing that appealed to me about North was it was on a mission, which was to deliver self-service means to the consumer and deliver government services to the consumer quickly and efficiently," he said.

North is now a leading public access kiosk services company, and Rommel's visibility within the kiosk industry has been high ever since.

"As difficult as it is to work with federal or state government, we wondered what would happen if you delivered a kiosk that would allow you to submit online forms for Social Security requests and to request court proceedings," Rommel said of his time at North.

In late September, Rommel was named interim president of kiosks.org Association advisory board. Craig Keefner, the industry trade group's executive director, said Rommel's influence was obvious even before that.

"When kiosks.org finally got its own Web server years ago, that Web server - a very nice SUN Sparc II - was donated to kiosks.org by Rick Rommel when he was with North Communications," Keefner said. "In one sense Rick was one of the original founders of kiosks.org. That server made magnitudes of difference. North was the original 800-pound gorilla of the market."

Family time

Rommel's office overlooks the Kodak campus in Rochester, which is literally next door to Frontier Field, the home of minor-league baseball's Rochester Red Wings and two-time A-League soccer champion Rochester Raging Rhinos. Being able to walk from work to the stadium for a game with his family fits into Rommel's philosophy that work and family can successfully coexist.

It helps that Rommel's wife Monica also works for Kodak, as product manager of the commercial and government systems division.

"We're either working or spending time with the kids," he said. "We're a very binary couple. It's football tonight and piano lessons tomorrow; all the accoutrements of child-raising."

Rommel jokes that work and family are his hobbies, though he admits to seeking escape at the area's ample ski slopes. But for a California boy living in upstate New York, the skiing is nice, but the family is nicer.

"Between the opportunities my wife and I have here and the town itself, it's a great place to live," he said.