Write Think Speak

Additional notes from CTIA 2011 keynote by Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski

2011-03-23T09:19:00.001-04:00

These notes augment a published article on the topic, which can be found at http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/CTIA-NAB-and-the-FCC-Battle-Over-Wireless-Spectrum-Reallocation-74523.aspx

Quotes from Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski's keynote the CTIA 2011 trade event, held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.

"We've made progress on a few points on the FCC's broadband plan, including open internet and transparency in roaming, specifically data roaming."

Open internet. Progress has been made, although we recognize the difference between mobile and fixed-wired broadband.

Data roaming. "We also understand the need for a competitive marketplace so we are pushing forward with, and continue to address, broadband roaming charges. Consumers should be able to roam anywhere in the country without roaming fees. We understand that many providers need roaming fees to remain competitive but we need to move forward with a roaming-free broadband details."

Spectrum re-allocation. "We see an estimated $30 billion in revenues for the government. We also see estimates that say broad consumer benefits may be ten-fold. While the number is not perfect, that could yield benefits up to $300 billion."

"While our appetite for innovation and mobile are insatiable, available spectrum is not. With three-fold spectrum inventory in place now, some analysts project a 35x increase in five years, meaning we will run out of spectrum within the next two years." [Other analysts contradict this statement, saying better spectrum management would resolve the issue.]

Wired, interconnected world. "When I visited CES, virtually every product on the CES floor was connected, primarily through wireless access. It shows that broadband is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. As demand increases, unleashing spectrum is important to American competitiveness and opportunity. [Gave iPad example of moving beyond befuddling to highly coveted]

Demographic and geographic disparities. Adoption rate for broadband is 67% overall, compared to Singapore's 90% adoption rate [fails to address compact size of Singapore vs USA]. Adoption is much lower for low-income and minority and rural areas [service providers don't make it available in many rural areas].

Innovation and Leadership. "Broadband is not only what you get when you plug into the wall, but also increasingly what you get on a mobile device. We see economic growth and global competitiveness through wireless broadband growth. Other than Japan, we have more subscribers for 3G mobile broadband, and we are the leader in 4G.

Yet by 2014 there will be more 4G devices in Europe than in US. We need to be innovating here and exporting to the rest of the world."

Legacy conundrum. "Broadband is a disruptive innovation that creates an innovator's dilemma in the US market, as the market leader. We have no choice but to develop a 21st century solution that accommodates 20th century legacy technologies, while other countries have an easier task as they have limited legacy technologies to integrate."

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. "There is an enormous costs of delay. 205,000 jobs could be created over the next five years, if spectrum is available. For instance, deploying towers will create 53,000 jobs, meeting the President's goal of bringing 4G to 90% of the US market. Making new applications will also generate jobs."

Socially Acceptable? A Call To Action Unheeded

2011-03-12T20:20:00.005-05:00

Panel tackles role of social media In pushing premium content online—and off.

The audience sat enraptured by the panelists, who discussed a blockbuster film set for its DVD debut just two weeks before Easter.

"The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader is set for DVD release on April 8, 2011 in the United States," said Simon Swart, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment executive vice president, "a perfect time for this audience to embrace the DVD as it did the theatrical release."

The audience Swart referred to included many attendees at the National Religious Broadcasters' event, held at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee in early March.

The session, titled “Connecting with Audiences in an Age of Distraction,” covered a number of faith-based films and online video projects that Sony, Fox and other premium content creation and distribution firms are gearing toward the NRB's core audience.

As part of the Super Session, Swart and fellow panelists explored the power of grassroots advocacy and—to a lesser extent—social media as a way to market premium content.

Michael Flaherty, an executive producer at Walden Media, the company that has seen its three Chronicles of Narnia films pull in over $1.5 billion in theatrical dollars, emphasized the importance of grassroots efforts to support a film.

"When we prepared to launch The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe with Disney," Flaherty said, referencing the distributor of the first to Narnia films, prior to Fox taking the lead on Dawn Treader, "we brought the trailer to show to your audience, just as we did with the second film, Prince Caspian."

Lion itself had over $750 million in box office receipts, in no small part thanks to its grassroots word-of-mouth marketing.

"You were instrumental in marketing all three films by word of mouth," Flaherty added to his appreciative audience, "from requesting that local theaters play Lion, to attending showings in record number."

During the Super Session, Flaherty and Swart confirmed that Walden and Fox were in discussion about adapting the next Narnia book, probably The Magician's Nephew, one of the four remaining books in the series written by Clive Staples Lewis in the 1950s.

When asked by panel moderator, Phil Cooke, about the importance of Facebook and other social media, one panelist discussed the difference between grassroots and social media.

"We've yet to see a direct connection between high social media interest and actual box office results," the panelist said, adding that one recent film he tracked had hundreds of thousands of likes on its Facebook page, yet the film didn't bring in business at the box office.

"It's possible that the sections of the film that were released on Facebook gave the potential audience enough of the film that they didn't feel a need to attend the actual movie," he said.

Still, this hasn't stopped social media from playing a role in driving online video, which the panel acknowledged. This may have implications on the 28-day release window if Netflix and others can convince the studios that its direct-to-DVD releases should also be released as online content on day-and-date.

"We see several new models emerging," said Fox's Swart, who showed a number of DVD-only release "sneak peeks" to the audience.

John Schneider, of Dukes of Hazzard fame, also spoke about the impact of grassroots efforts on a film's marketing impact.

"I can't tell you how many TV commercials I've watched since I got TiVO in my house years ago," said Schneider, whose appearance at the event was intended to drive interest in Doonby, a movie Schneider will star in later this year. "If it were up to me, I'd spent a lot less on TV commercials to entice moviegoers and alot more on social media and grassroots efforts like this session."

Walden's Flaherty agreed that social media is important, but said that word-of-mouth's impact on consumer action is even more important.

"Even if you 'like' a film on Facebook," added Flaherty, "be sure you support the film at the box office, since that's the yardstick for which most premium content is still judged, and it will have a direct impact on being able to fund future films that you like."

Panel host Phil Cooke also talked about the importance of online grassroots efforts, including a fan base that might be a little "crazy" as he put it. Cooke talked about a previous event he attended, at which the Dawn Treader trailer was shown for the first time.

"At least the audience of religious broadcasters didn't film the trailer and post it online," Cooke said, which elicited a laugh from the radio and TV producers in the room, "but within twenty minutes of the trailer being shown, I saw a Google Alert in my phone's email inbox telling me that two sites already had detailed reports about the trailer."

Korn/Ferry International Doesn't Get It

2010-12-09T19:15:00.001-05:00

Allen Delattre, Global Managing Director of Korn/Ferry International's Technology Practice, gave a brief presentation at GigaOm's Net:Work 2010 on the human factor in the future of work.

"Technology has progressed, but have we?" asked Delattre. "Pick your timeframe—5 or 10 years—and you'll see how rapidly technology has changed. Yet we as humans haven't evolved organically."

I thought I was at a tech conference, not a Matrix meet-up.

"You thought the telegraph to telephone was a bit leap," said Delattre, "but we've done more in the last fifteen years than in the past 3000 years."

I'm now beginning to wonder if there's a disconnect with reality, or just a marketing pitch coming, since there's not much that we've done recently that wasn't done in the 1800s (see the
Victorian Internet as a proof point: have we really pushed beyond the place shifting?)

"We live in world where we live locally but have to work globally," he continued. D'oh!

One good piece of news, however, in the presentation is the fact that democracy is growing across the world, at least based around the concept of the democratization of IT. Delattre wisely calls this "constructive anarchy" because workers are brining new mobile devices—such as the iPad—to the workplace.

"They are, in essence, dragging along the IT departments to the point of better tools to get work done," he said.

Yet there's one more disconnect.

"The past is no longer an indicator of the future," he said. "Tomorrow's leaders need to adapt and execute."

Yet he calls out that those who "took a turn through marketing and finance and operations" might not be the candidates to push up the chain, since they don't have the "new media" or "social media" chops.

But wait! Where will they get the experience to adapt, if we're overlooking those people who have taking a turn through finance, marketing and operations? What are they adapting from?

Plantronics shows off personal speakerphone

2010-12-09T17:58:00.000-05:00

Renee Niemi, SVP, Communication Solutions with Plantronics presented a few new (or soon-to-be available) products.

To set the stage, she mentioned that there's a disconnect (no pun) between the message, tone of voice and body language between face-to-face meetings and voice-only calls.

Face-to-Face / Video, she says, breaks down this way: 7% message, 38% tone of voice and 55% body language, while voice-only / phone call communication is 13% message and 87% tone of voice.

Niemi then showed off Calysto 825, a new personal speakerphone that connects the mobile phone and PC phone (Skype) with a unified user interface.

"Because it works with both the PC phone and your mobile phone, it lets you focus on the conversation, not the tool," said Niemi. "It also has a wireless microphone, which allows you clip the microphone on and still remain part of the conference if you need to step away from the speakerphone."

The latter feature assumes you stay within distance of the speaker, of course, and will hopefully have a mute button for those times you need to stay connected but muted.

Another tool is a software app that Plantronics is launching called Instant Meeting, an Android and Blackberry app that allows one-touch connection to conference calls.

It searches through the Outlook calendar [and hopefully other CalDav calendars such as Google Calendar or iCal] and then prompts to join the meeting at the appropriate time.

When confirmed, it will dial the number, enter the passcode and directly put you in to the conference call with a single touch. Diemi didn't really describe what happens in those systems in which you have to say your name and push the # on the keypad before joining the conference, but perhaps there's magic happening there, too, which we'll find out when the app is released.

Finally, she showed off the Voyager Pro UC, a new headset that allows synchronized presence between the PC phone and the mobile phone. In addition, it has sensor capability, or the ability to know whether a headset is being worn or not.

This sensor capability eliminates the issue of having a phone call go to your Bluetooth connected headset that may have slipped down between the seat or is in your coat pocket. If you find it and then put it on, the call will switch over to the headset. Another outstanding questions on this technology, though: what if you take it off again?

The Death of Place?

2010-12-09T12:26:00.003-05:00

MOBILOCRACY: Spreading the Wealth of Mobile Connectivity

Evan Kaplan, President and CEO, iPass, predicts we're about to see a"destruction of place."

Subtitled THE INALIENABLE RIGHTS OF THE MOBILE WORKFORCE, Kaplan's presentation at GigaOm's Net:Work 2010, maps out a world where mobility or mobile work is the rule, rather than the exception that it was just a decade ago.

"Today's average mobile employee is 46 years old and lives outside of Silicon Valley," said Kaplan, whose research is based on the Mobile Workforce Report, a quarterly survey of about 2,000 of the 2.5 million iPass users. "Main Streeters are catching up with the technological elite, many have multiple devices, and their embrace of smartphones and tablets are creating the largest workplace disruption since the PC."

Trends from the iPass Mobile Workforce Report include:

1. Security and cost / productivity imbalance
2. Hyper-connected workers are becoming a norm: only 6% of workers totally disconnect on vacation
3. Post PC - the device stack that lets me work across multiple devices [simultaneously]
4. Multi-generational and global dissemination of the mobile workforce continues.
5. Multiple devices: 50% have three devices

"A highly mobile lifestyle come certain habits," says Kaplan, "which is both highly beneficial and also potentially risky to the enterprise."

"For instance, devices are cheap, but the networks are expensive," said Kaplan. "Just look at the recent LTE high-speed mobile data announcement by Verizon, where a 5GB subscription at $50 per month, can be drained in less than two hours of video viewing."

According to Kaplan, whose company works with mobile enterprise customers, enterprises need to strike the fine balance between data security protection and mobile employee productivity.

"The dirty secret is that the most of these mobile devices are more secure than the PCs or laptops we provision," said Kaplan.

Finally, Kaplan discussed what he calls the Mobility Bill of Rights:

I have the right to stay connected, to access the best networks and services, choose what device I want to use," said Kaplan, "and I want to personalize it (make it my own)."

"I want to be free of security threats and not be deprived of IT support," he continued. "I am one person, so I want one account for all my devices, not one per device."

Through it all, Kaplan talks about the "death of location" as a norm, but says that location is even more important than it was before.

"We see the cropping up of co-working, including the local CitizenSpace [here in San Francisco]," said Kaplan. "We see Starbucks and other coffee shops positioning themselves as 'third space' locations, since the need to meet with a group—and even to be around others while you work on your own thing—is still a key factor."

Is Nimble Cool Again?

2010-12-07T12:00:00.001-05:00

"Entrepreneurs used to brag about the size of their funding round; now they boast about how little money they need."

http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/on-the-wings-of-angels

iPhoned

Playing Favorites

2010-12-06T18:58:00.000-05:00

Ted Turner, who has five children, is now publicly stating that the US should impose a one-child policy.

Which of Turner's five children would he have chosen to spare? And how to the other four feel?

Given Turner's older sister's work as a missionary, does Ted Turner think she should have been the one to live, or would he have chosen to make an exception for the younger child (himself)?

Sometimes the idiots really do rise to the top.

Switching to guns

2010-09-02T22:52:00.001-04:00

Another Tennessee ride, complete with guns and missiles.

iPhoned

Oddest moments in local news storytelling

2010-09-02T13:18:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure what the author of the story was trying to convey - or whether it was just this bizarre - but how does one get from being a 66-year-old offended by turtle skinning to having a police officer draw a weapon on you? If you're Polly Foster of Kingsport, TN, it's just a small step from heroine to felon.

Make Consumers Say What You Want Them To Say

2010-08-27T14:05:00.000-04:00

This one is too good to pass up:

Under the headline "How to get power users answering questions the way you want" a pro-smart-grid daily trade rag, Smart Grid Today, dispenses advice on how to get consumers to answer the way you want them to answer.

Pepco finds word choice makes all the difference:

" 'Utilities should use caution in phrasing questions to consumers about the smart grid since the choice of words strongly influences the answers,' Rick Morgan, a regulator with the Washington, DC, PSC, told us Wednesday," Smart Grid Today states in its August 27, 2010 issue.

The approach is of particular importance if you're trying to get government funding, as many smart grid firms are attempting as part of the greentech initiatives popular in Washington.

Maybe the headline on Smart Grid Today would better be stated:

"Leading questions? Of course we recommend using them! Listening to the consumer answer an open-ended question? No way!"

Idiots Among Us

2009-12-18T22:32:00.003-05:00

I'm a conservative, but I often find that other conservatives confuse passion with a lack of critical reasoning, giving conservatives a bad name when it comes to engaging in the debate of ideas.

In that vein, there's a conservative movie reviewer whose reviews, for all intents and purposes, read like those of an uneducated idiot.

Dr. Ted Baehr, whose title might imply the habits of an educated mind, appears to be one who likes to cast aspersions at "motes" without considering the "beam" in his own eye. Specifically, Dr. Baehr's review of the movie Avatar from James Cameron reaches a new low, apparently written in haste by a someone who can't quite put coherent thoughts together.

Ignoring, for the moment, the intent of Dr. Baehr's review and whether he understands the difference between environmentalism and colonialism (hint: the latter has to do with taking something that's not yours, from someone who owned it before you, via some form of "divine right" justification), let's look at the basic mistakes he makes in putting forth his argument.

Dr. Baehr's review is full of grammatical, logical and theological errors. Here are just three examples:

1. "If only someone had edited this movie, it may have been more interesting"

Ironically this sentence follows shortly after Dr. Baehr declares that "when you put spectacle first, you turn a great little movie like King King into King Bore." In other words, Dr. Baehr forgot to edit his own snipe at Cameron's editing. Both visual and textual editing require review, and Dr. Baehr fails the grammar check on this point.

2. Dr. Baehr's paraphrase of Aristotle's sequencing of "entertainment" (according to Dr. Baehr) or "tragedy" (according to Aristotle) is wrong.

"Great entertainment puts plot first, character second, dialogue third, idea forth, music fifth and spectacle last, as Aristotle noted."

Dr. Baehr, in bastardizing the tragedy list for his own entertainment purposes, missed a few of Aristotle's points. The proper order is: plot, character, thought, diction, song, melody. At least Dr. Baehr could appear to be a "learned man" by getting the sequencing right.

3. Dr. Baehr makes a disturbing theological leap of faith when he suggests that all the aliens in Avatar needed was Jesus Christ. Seriously . . .

"What the . . . aliens in the movie need to deliver them from their severe group think is the loving salvation available only through the true God, Jesus Christ."

Does Dr. Baehr really believe that aliens can be saved? If so, is he suggesting Christ went to die on multiple planets, and not just Earth?

I've sent an email to Dr. Baehr asking him to expound on those two questions.

His answers will tell us exactly what his theology consists of, which could be more dangerous than the flaws he attempts to explain in Cameron's fictional Avatar movie.

Maybe he would've been better off sticking with a single-sentence review in "movie speak" that translates just as effectively for conservative viewers as it does for liberal ones: Avatar is Pocahontas (Terrence Malick's The New World) meets Apocalypse Now.

An Impressive Choice

2009-11-30T15:23:00.002-05:00

In a recent survey, Americans were asked to choose what they would like to do most, based on a series of options.

"Half of Americans chose laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as a ceremony in which they'd most like to participate. That swamped the other choices: lighting the Olympic torch, tossing the coin to open a Super Bowl, starting the race at the Indianapolis 500, ringing the opening bell at the stock exchange and throwing out the first pitch at the World Series."

The result was surprising on one hand, but having had the honor of laying a wreath when I was 18, I understand the awe it inspires (and still remember, to this day, the gloves of the honor guard, sopping with sweat as they execute very precise maneuvers).

Metadata: Certainly Not Boring

2009-11-25T19:08:00.002-05:00

Especially in this interview that Peter Cervieri recorded at last week's Streaming Media West 2009 show.

Peter's interviews for his ScribeMedia.org often focuses on topics that are both timely and somewhat controversial, but metadata often doesn't fit in the latter category, unless you count Peter's triple-X rated title for the interview.

While my slightly-pseudo-Southern accent always reminds me that I talk a bit slower now than I did when I lived in my native New York, Peter did a good job of steering the conversation to cover many of the points from my recent metadata article: Metadata: What You Need to Know (And Why You Need to Know It)

Running time for the interview is 12:29

Embarrassment in Entrepreneurship?

2009-11-13T13:33:00.001-05:00

A great quote from the founder of LinkedIn:

"If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late."

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/technology/article/the-iterate-fast-and-release-often-philosophy-of-entrepreneurship-ben-parr

iPhoned

Opportunity: Green Power, Packet Origination

2009-11-07T13:10:00.000-05:00

Next week, I'll have the opportunity - through a green-power startup that I'm assisting - to meet with David Boggs in Palo Alto. The startup is in stealth mode, but I hope to spend the time discussing a few marketing options and the operational implications of data-center power retrofitting

For those of you who know your Ethernet packets, David's name may not be quite as familiar as that of his boss, Robert (Bob) Metcalfe. Yet both of them are listed on the Microsoft academic search for a few interesting papers, including this one in 1975:

R. M. Metcalfe, D. R. Boggs :

Ethernet: distributed packet switching for local computer networks

, 1975

(Citations: 8)

In both 1975 and 1976, Ethernet was being presented by and at the Berkeley Workshop on Distributed Data Management and Computer Networks.

Boggs, Metcalfe and colleagues went on to deal with issues facing early Ethernet implementations, including:

Robert M. Metcalfe, David R. Boggs, Charles P. Thacker, Butler W. Lampson :

Multipoint data communication system with collision detection

, 1977

(Citations: 3)

I asked a friend, who recently went to hear SRI's Doug Engelbart speak during the 40th anniversary of his famous "mother of all demos" on Augmentation, why we seemed to be getting the opportunity to meet these pioneers when they live so close to many of Silicon Valley's newest, hottest upstarts.

"It's because we care," she said.

Cutting the Cord

2009-11-06T19:31:00.000-05:00

In a post at www.workflowed.com, I posited about the armies amassing on the borders of streaming media for the next land grab.

I dubbed this The Third Wave as part of a series of articles I've been writing on satellite providers, traditional broadcasters and cable MSOs.

Speaking of the latter, there's an interesting article about "cord cutting" by cable subscribers.

Cable operators have been concerned about the concept of cord cutting where subscriber cancel their cable subscription and opt to watch online video. While analysts downplay it, I can attest that it seems as prevalent as the cord-cutting phenomenon of local telephone service, where consumers opt for just a mobile phone and a cable-internet combination if they can't get "naked DSL" from the local telco provider.

Yet some of the MSOs seem to think that changing consumer behavior is the way to get consumer to "respect" subscription revenues.

He said the current OnDemand Online trial - offering viewers access to cable channel shows in exchange for identifying themselves as subscribers - was not an effort to "change the advertising model or get a minute back from content providers," rather it is a way to "

"We need to get in front of the biggest social movement I've ever seen," said Comcast's COO, Steve Burke. "Online video consumption is off the charts, and if we don't figure out how to change that behavior so it respects copyright and subscription revenue on the part of distributors, we're going to wake up and see an entire generation cord cutting."

Wait, I have to respect my MSO enough to pay them money? Talk about an entitlement mentality!

Previously c

Do You Believe In Miracles?

2009-11-03T22:30:00.007-05:00

Growing up in the late 1970s near Lake Placid, New York, I vividly remember the burgeoning Olympic presence, with its raccoon mascot, visitors from the City, and Bauer skates. Especially the Bauer skates.

My six-year-old mind was convinced a pair of Bauer skates would not only let me follow the big kids as they shoveled off a make-shift hockey rink on the lake, but that Bauers were key to assisting in any playground hockey victory. Yes, it was before I learned what advertising and branding were all about.

This evening, Lake Placid is the center of attention for a different reason: NY 23's third-party candidate is none other than Lake Placid's Doug Hoffman, who lives close by to where John Brown's body lies a moulderin' in the grave.

Hoffman's the one Sarah Palin went rogue for a few weeks back, endorsing him over the Republican candidate, who has since withdrawn from the race and is now backing her Democratic opponent. Final election results may be delayed until tomorrow, as the area's trying out some new voting machines.

This article on Hoffman uses the "Miracle on Ice" as a framing device that will resonate well with those in and around Lake Placid.

[Update: While this was a personal reminiscence of growing up in the district, perhaps Hoffman should have run a local campaign, rather than just reaching for the stars. The Watertown Daily Times' pet projects often appeal to a small, but vocal, constituency; in this case, however, the editorial board nailed the defining issue in the last paragraph.]

More great benefits . . . Starbucks

2009-11-02T22:39:00.000-05:00

Whenever I see an email that starts with words like "improving" and "more great benefits" I know I'm about to lose some of the benefits I already had. Sure enough, Starbucks is now promising me that . . .

Except none of the benefits that Starbucks is offering me are of any benefit at all.

First, the really good stuff, offering "benefits such as free flavored syrups or brewed coffee refills that many of you have asked for". Did I ask for flavored syrups in my solo espresso? Do I want to pour brewed coffee refills into that tiny cup? Neither one of those seem a benefit to me.

And then the kicker, which starts with "while it will not provide the 10% discount" of my current program, it will be FREE. As if Starbucks thinks that we don't realize the bargain we get with the current paid card . . .

Three more reasons to ditch Starbucks for the new Panera next door. Nothing to see here, please move along.

Perspective: SUPERCOMM Panel

2009-10-20T21:14:00.002-04:00

As mentioned a few weeks ago, I've been asked to speak on a SUPERCOMM panel this Thursday, October 22, 2009, at 4:15 PM Central Time.

Overview details mention that bloggers, journalists and industry analysts will discuss all things broadband, including:

- The current state of broadband infrastructure and technology
- Key broadband industry developments and trends
- National broadband strategy
- Broadband service delivery
- The future of broadband service and infrastructure

A few other topics I'd like to see discussed include:

- FTTH / FTTx (fiber to the premise) as it corresponds to streaming media and the need for IPv6

- Network neutrality (love it, hate it, or want to marginalize it, net neutrality ties closely to the philosophy of an open network that has gained ground in other parts of the world)

- The consistent digital divide between urban and rural locations (keep an eye on this topic during the deployment of the $7.2 billion in loans and grants in the stimulus plan)

In addition, I'd been asked by the moderator, Patti Reali, to discuss my blogging approach and philosophy. As a heads-up for the audience, I'm the newest blogger in the group: while I'm an
early adopter in many areas, I'm one of those long-time holdouts on blogging for a variety of reasons (tools that limited my ability to blog effectively on multiple platforms, lack of an editor to grammar / reality check my work, etc).

I find that I may post "articles" or "mini articles" that might not have a home in any of the magazines I write for, but are still newsworthy from an analytical standpoint. I'm not really interested in micro-blogging or twitter since I can't see immediate value in 140 characters, unless it's to send a URL to a longer analytical piece.

I am very interested in applying the "on the record / off the record" and basic journalism mindset to the analysis I provide, though, so I also see a move to blogging as a way to supplement prior articles that were required in a more timely "news" manner.

I'm still learning about blogging processes. For instance, as additional information reveals itself, one philosophical question I have is whether to go back and update the original blog post, or to apply a newspaper-like approach with an additional follow-up story.

Oh, and I think the FTC rule about bloggers revealing compensation for product reviews is a good thing . . .

Opportunity: Global Entrepreneurship Week "Debate" on co-working vs incubation

2009-10-18T13:15:00.004-04:00

Along with my friend and colleague, Jose Castillo, who runs the SparkPlaza co-working space, I'm going to be part of a "debate" on the merits of co-working versus incubation for those businesses that want to move from the spare bedroom to the boardroom.

The event, held in conjunction with the Northeast Tennessee Technology Council, debuts at SparkPlaza in Johnson City, TN, from 8:00-9:30 AM on 23 November 2009. It's also been added to the LaunchPin calendar.

A potential list of topics / questions, comparing supervised growth vs organic growth (the two basic tenets of entrepreneurial growth, here are the topic points:

1. Why do entrepreneurs move from their spare bedroom to a co-working or incubation facility?
2. What services are provided by each (tactical, such as copier, fax, phones, internet; strategic such as small business advice, mentoring)?
3. How big can one scale a company inside each?
4. What does "graduation" from a co-working space and from an incubation space?
5. What equity stake does the co-working or incubation group take in the companies that are part of each facility? In other words, is co-working peer-to-peer or are some peers more equal than others?

We've also decided to add two guest debaters to help tag-team two topics of great interest:

First, Yvette Fragile, formerly with Knoxville News-Sentinel and now with iShoptheTri.com, will help Jose and Tim make sense of the the roles of social and traditional media in business startup marketing. Second, Rayford Johnson from the ETSU innovation lab will help expand the incubation / co-working debate when we look at for-profit versus not-for-profit incubation.

Look forward to seeing you there, if you're in the area and can make it.

Perspective: Jan Maciejewski, MD of SUPERCOMM

2009-10-07T07:39:00.005-04:00

[Update: plans have been finalized, so come see the panel if you're going to be at SUPERCOMM!]

While I wait to hear about the uncertain fate of my SUPERCOMM panel, I had the opportunity to speak today to Jan Maciejewski, whose role as Managing Director is to bring the show back into heightened relevance.

Maciejewski has been in the telecommunications industry for some time, having served as an executive at both Alcatel and Spirent, and is based in London as part of EXPOCOMM Events LLC, the event-management company responsible for the multi-year contract with the owners of SUPERCOMM.

Our discussion covered a wide range of topics around SUPERCOMM, including how to leverage an existing brand, broadening the show's perspective to broadband across both wireline and wireless, and the requirement to attract top speakers to help set the tone for the future of the show. Attracting Aneesh Chopra to speak was the topic of a previous WriteThinkSpeak post, which has had a surprising number of reads, now ranking second in Google searches only to the official SUPERCOMM announcement.

"We are extremely grateful for Aneesh's decision to come speak about broadband," said Maciejewski, noting that Chopra's role as CTO of the United States provides a good platform from which to discuss the transformation of the US into a broadband nation, including rural and urban deployment, as well as providing direction on the strategic and tactical goals of stimulus funding.

"We will also have sessions that follow along the lines of Aneesh's vision," Maciejewski continued, "providing attendees with guidance on how to apply for funding. Beyond Aneesh's keynote, we also have representation from the NTIA and speeches from the CEOs of leading service providers to help give attendees a sense of the direction of industry."

The NTIA presenter referred to is Larry Strickling, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and Administrator, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Along with Jonathan Adelstein, Administrator, Rural Utilities Service (RUS) from the USDA, they will discuss the $7.2 billion allocated to national broadband stimulus.

The show has traditionally been in June in Chicago, although it ceased to exist two years ago, with the owners of the show going off to start up separate shows, known as TelecomNext and Nextcomm, respectively. When EXPOCOMM was engaged in March, 2009, to manage the re-emergent SUPERCOMM, plans were underway to hold the show in June, but a few months later the decision was made to shift the time slot to October.

The timing of the show is shortly after the release of a part of the first round of stimulus funding," said Maciejewski, "so we feel vindicated in the decision to move the show to the October time slot. As for the venue, we plan on keeping it in Chicago for at least next year; we take a sounding from the exhibitor community and use that to account for the next year's event location, but all indications lead to SUPERCOMM being in Chicago next year."

In the discussion of the strength of the SUPERCOMM brand, Maciejewski emphasized both the staying power of the brand and the ability to use this inflection point to expand the horizon of future SUPERCOMM shows.

"We wanted to re-establish a well-known brand, that had been weakened slightly by the events of the past few years," said Maciejewski. "Moving it beyond an infrastructure wireline show and toward the concept of 'Broadband Life' isn't a reaction to that, however, but merely an acknowledgement that the broadband expansion in the US is being led by the service providers who traditionally attend the show."

"We're not going to be moving toward the consumer end, or consumer equipment," he continued, when asked whether the show ran the risk of brand dilution when shows such as Mobile World Congress or the Consumer Electronics Show also have a broadband convergence factor. "We want to focus on the business-to-business aspect of the service provider who might buy a set of products or services to augment its offering to the consumer. As the industry moves further in to a time where putting a PC in the back of a consumer television is standard practice, we would also expect many set-top box manfacturers to exhibit at SUPERCOMM. After all, it's all part of broadband expansion."

SUPERCOMM, hosted by owners TIA and US Telecom, also commissioned a survey, in which "nearly 70 percent of all respondents believe uninterrupted broadband access should be as readily available as other utilities like electricity and water."

Maciejewski sees this as a key sentiment that will help both the US - which lags in broadband deployment against Asian and European countries - and the show in general.

"Broadband is at the core of how we live and work today," he said. "Beyond our survey findings underscore the fact that the world has taken on a ‘Broadband Life’ mentality, SUPERCOMM brings together, under one roof, the companies and people that are at the forefront of driving broadband technology innovation to improve our quality of life."

SUPERCOMM runs from October 21-23, 2009 at Chicago's McCormick Place exhibition hall. Portions of the event will also be streamed.

Perspective: Aneesh Chopra to address SUPERCOMM

2009-09-29T09:17:00.000-04:00

One of the areas I've worked in over the past few years has been economic development, specifically technology-based economic development in the rural Tennessee-Virginia border area.

During a multi-year stint launching a Chamber of Commerce small business initiative (KOSBE) and the launch of a non-metropolitan World Trade Center (MountainSouth WTC), I had the opportunity to work with Aneesh Chopra.

At that time, Aneesh was the CTO for the Commonwealth of Virginia, but he has since moved on to the national level. I was delighted to hear that he will be speaking at SUPERCOMM on the same day as my session.

Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. and Associate Director for Technology in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy will deliver a keynote at SUPERCOMM 2009. Chopra--appointed by President Obama to "promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities"--will deliver his vision of how broadband will transform the American economy on Day 2, Thursday, October 22, 2009.

Lease termination for not displaying pro Obama merchandise?

2009-09-26T20:20:00.000-04:00

Wow, if this is true, our local mall is in a world of its own, forcing local entrepreneurs to display pro Obama merchandise along with best-selling anti-Obama merchandise: http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/News/print.php?ID=71327

Have sent the following email to the mall's management, requesting a reply:

Is it true, as stated in the JC Press and on WJHL Channel 11, that Graphic Edge's Mr. Fuchs was asked to display pro-Obama merchandise or risk termination?

Will report on what I hear back.

Opportunity: SUPERCOMM Panel

2009-09-18T09:03:00.005-04:00

[Update: plans have been finalized, so come see the panel if you're going to be at SUPERCOMM!]

SUPERCOMM, the show that was, then wasn't, but now is again, has apparently decided to host a panel of journalists and bloggers at its upcoming show. Earlier today, I got an invitation, which reads, in part:

I work with the SUPERCOMM team and the reason for my email is to invite you to participate as a panelist for a session we're programming for the show. The panel session comprised of journalists from business and trade publications as well as industry bloggers. If you're available, we would love to have you as a panelist.

The panel is slated to take place on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 4:15 PM Central Time.

Each panelist comes to the table with a strong voice and opinion on the state of broadband and broader industry issues, but also have varied perspectives given your key reader constituents. We anticipate a highly interactive, lively and thought-provoking discussion that will be blogged and tweeted about days, weeks and months following the show.

Still trying to figure out what kind of topic would be blogged and tweeted about for "days, weeks and months following the show" but perhaps one of the panelist will make a statement, like Jan Ozer did a few years ago ("MPEG-4 Is Dead") that will send the rest of us to our keyboards to counter the argument.

More on the session as the event approaches. Details on the SUPERCOMM 2009 show, which is back in Chicago, can be found here.

Lured by Fox News . . .

2009-09-18T06:41:00.002-04:00

Time, the weekly magazine whose parent company also owns CNN, is apparently upset about Glenn Beck.

Upset enough that it wants everyone to know, in a recent article, that he can't write ("he gets alot of help from his staff") and is making money ("the value of his Fox contract is reliably said to be about $2 million per year").

Yet, since CNN and Time are jointly owned, Time should be willing to reveal this fact to its readers.

"Lured by the Fox News Channel from CNN's Headline News channel last year, Beck has lit up the 5 p.m. slot in a way never thought possible by industry watchers, drawing upwards of 3 million viewers on some recent days."

No mention at all about the relationship between Time and CNN in the quoted sentence, or anywhere else in the article.

Doing so might make Time suspect in its muckrakng against Beck. At the very least, this begs the question of conflict of interest. Worse, it appears Time is exercising payback against someone who left the CNN fold and has since trounced CNN in the ratings war.

Despite the way it accuses Beck of stirring up discord, the article leaps out of the Beck-bashing mire to a lofty final sentence designed to show Time is above the fray:

"If the time comes when every audience is screaming, who, in the end, is left to listen?"

Perhaps it's worth a moment of Time to reflect on the magazine's own conflicted screaming.

An Uninvited Friend

2009-08-28T13:10:00.000-04:00

Facebook, the company, just became your friend, even though you didn't choose them. And they just crashed your party, Big Brother style.

When Facebook added the Like/Unlike option alongside comments, many users asked for a "Dislike" option if they felt their friends were going over the top in terms of expressing a particular viewpoint.

Not a bad idea.

Facebook, though, has ignored those requests and chosen, instead, to add a "Report" option, in the same vein as "flag@whitehouse.gov" for those "fishy" posts so that we can now report our friends anonymously. But who do we report them to? To our friend in the sky, Facebook.

The choices when reporting a friend's wrongdoings are "inappropriate content", "inappropriate or pornographic picture" or "attacks individual or group".

Think about it: if I choose my friends, what right does Facebook have to arbitrate amongst us friends? Are they the all-knowing Friend, choosing what is appropriate between myself and those I've chosen to keep in my circle of friends? It's not as if this content is available to everyone on the web; it's only available to friends I've chosen.

Maybe Facebook meant well, and I can certainly see their point on pornography. But we already have the option to limit what we see from feeds of friends who go over the top, and it works as intended, without the threat of banishment from Facebook.

On matters of politics, lifestyle, et al, for Facebook to suddenly become the arbiter amongst a group of friends makes Facebook the equivalent of the schoolyard monitor at recess; yes, they control the joint, but you really don't want them mucking up your free time before they drag you back into the classroom.

Facebook won't be able to effectively police the bullying, and the unintended side effect of the "Report" feature will be a chilling impact on those of us who might choose to have friends of different political or lifestyle persuasions, for fear one of those friends will "report" us and we'll lose our Facebook accounts.

Way to go, Facebook: you've now inadvertently segmented a growing community of eclectic friendships back into small camps of like-minded (whether narrow or broad) people.

Google Purchases On2 - Additional Thoughts

2009-08-05T16:43:00.003-04:00

Dan Rayburn, whose Business of Video blog is integrated into the StreamingMedia.com home page, alongside articles that I and others write, posted this morning about the Google-On2 acquisition. In his blog post, labelled Google's Acquisition of On2 Not a Big Deal, Here's Why, Dan listed off a series of reasons why Google may not have been interested in purchasing On2.

A fascinating read, and a bit of a different take from the streamingmedia.com news article I'd written early this morning, which outlined the deal.

In between writing mine and reading Dan's I had spent some time thinking through what Google might be up to, so I posted the following as a comment on Dan's blog:

I think Google's got a nice three-base hit going on here, with the outside chance of a home run. As you mention, open sourcing VP8 could deal with the objections that have been raised more loudly since the Open Video Conference in June and the subsequent impact on the HTML 5 video tag discussions.

As mentioned in the streamingmedia.com articles I did around both of those topics, Google's made it plain, at least with Chrome, that it's wiling to play both in the open-source and standards-based video worlds.

The original open-sourcing of the VP codec that Theora is based on, VP3.2, has raised valid objections about the open-source community's use of a "tired" code base to attempt an assault on H.264.

The thing is, Google doesn't have to open-source VP8 to be a part of the open-source movement toward a "free" codec; they can open-source VP7 instead, which provides a chance for the open-source community to mount a decent effort to catch up with H.264 (and for Wikimedia and Mozilla and Chrome to get what they wanted during the HTML5 debate)

Based on the comparisons I did a few years ago (in Dec 2007, available at www.on2.com/file.php?195) between VP6, VP7 and H.264, if they released VP7 as open-source it would bring open-source and standards-based codecs close to parity.

The second-base play is that Google gets H.264 as part of its On2 purchase. That's what the Hantro part of the On2 purchase gives Google a double benefit.

The third-base play is that Google gets to make the open-source community happy, play in the standards-based world with H.264 and keep VP8 all to itself as a proprietary codec for live, low-latency, bi-directional streams (beyond Googletalk, think Skype, AIM Triton, the Chinese telecom that On2 has as a client for video IM, etc.)

Will it be a home run? I think the economies of scale Google gets from buying out of an unknown licensing fee might look like a way to get that final base, but the real final sprint from third to home plate will be all about Google's ability to execute on a vision like the one I'm conjecturing. Regardless, the gestalt of these moves means Google gets a chance to keep something for itself, while building a barrier to entry on the innovation side.

Someone followed up with a response, asking about the patent litigation that could follow, and whether the Hantro portion of On2 (H.264 embedded) would be as big an issue, so I posted the following clarifying comments.

One of the reasons, as least in my mind, that On2 bought Hantro was to hedge its bets and further embed itself into the embedded device space. What On2 got from Hantro, then, was a set of expertise that it could couple with a group of the original RPI researchers that form the core of On2's development team.

The latter group has been continually innovating for well over a decade, and while it's not a surefire method for success, since so much money has to be rolled back into research and development, it certainly has allowed a small company like On2 to keep pace with the industry as a whole.

Will this keep the IP lawsuits at bay? I suspect not, but since Google specifically calls out the R&D and innovation as a factor in the purchase, one wonders - if Google can keep them happy - what greenfield innovations the small team will be able to perform with somewhat limitless resources and a mobile / embedded platform that's a potential alternative to RIM and Apple's offerings.

It's still early in the process, and On2 has its earnings call tomorrow, but it seems like a decent plan if Google's on track to do even a fraction of this . . .

Wrapup: CES and Mobile World Congress, or How I Spent My Winter Break

2008-02-15T12:36:00.000-05:00

The first 45 days of any year for a digital media consultant typically means lots of travel. After all, even if Macworld and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) don’t fall on the exact same days, the choice of which to go to is not eliminated: it just means you get to make two trips to the west coast - one to Vegas and one to San Francisco.

Then there are the other shows that creep up and around the end of January; this year I attended Video 08, a trade show in Orlando geared toward those who do event videography for a living and who are discovering streaming media as a huge sales, marketing and revenue vein that can keep brides, graduates and mitzvah goers happy for years to come.

Packing it all in
Then, in early February, the small (tiny?) screen show takes place in Barcelona, the recently renamed Mobile World Congress.

This year’s press bags for both the Vegas and Barcelona events were decent backpacks; and, while I normally give up the goods for the kids (as one journalist waiting in the press line said: “I never have to buy my girls a back pack for school”) I chose to put these two packs to a real-world test in a climb up Monserrat to the Sant Jeroni chapel and overlook.

Turns out each one was useful after all, and not just for carrying a few pieces of swag and tons of marketing slicks picked up during the week-long booth troll [Note to PR firms: the trend toward USB thumb drives is a very good idea, especially if it combines multiple companies together].

Then there is the writing. Between the Sourcebook, Streaming Media’s year in review (and trend predictor) that I contribute to, the regular writing from each day at the shows and finalizing market analysis / go-to-market strategy reports for clients, the early part of the year turns into a 25,000 to 30,000 word marathon that keeps the consulting juices flowing and done to avoid the “2 year consulting” plague of cash-cow consulting that relies on old data.

So that, hopefully, is it for the winter break trade show travel schedule. Not that the travel slows down, as I’ve got client projects in late February and early March, then some personal travel for a few weddings, followed by the next big shows take place in April, May and June, with NAB, Streaming Media East and the Infocomm-NSCA-NxtComm glom in sequential order.

Makes one tired just thinking about the schedule, but we do what needs to be done, and often travel so that you - or our clients - don’t have to.

Handsets: Personal Devices or Enabling Platforms?

2008-02-13T12:34:00.000-05:00

This year’s Mobile World Congress, the show formerly known as 3GSM World Congress, has embraced “radio agnosticism” as a way to push mobile technologies of all kinds forward - including CDMA, WiMax, Long Term Evolution (LTE) among others.

In town covering the show for Streaming Media (www.streamingmedia.com), I stopped by the Vodafone store closest to the Fira, to check on why my Vodafone chip from Italy wasn’t working in Spain. The very helpful attendant first said my phone, purchased in Switzerland in 2006, didn’t work on Vodafone’s Spanish network.

A Vodafone is a Vodafone is a Vodafone
Turns out it wasn’t the phone, or that I’d not registered on Vodafone’s network - had tried that before looking for a store - or even that I was using a phone that was two years old (try carting a clunky Motorola to a trade show dinner with Nokia, where N95 and E71 handsets abound, although I did score with the multi-hinged Samsung I carry in my back pocket by habit even when I’m not in a country with Verizon coverage - err, every country except the United States).

Turns out I needed to buy a new SIM chip since I’d not used any of my minutes in the last year, which meant I was going to pay Euros 24 for the ability to text a colleague who had picked up my apartment key. Since I’d exhausted all other means of connecting, including texting from “free SMS” pages and sending emails, and it was 8:30 PM (30 hours since I’d slept horizontally), it was worth expense.

While I waited for my turn at the Vodafone store, I had a chance to look at the new HSDPA modems, glance at the touch-sensitive phones and look over service plans. It struck me that two of three issues holding back universal connectivity are about ready to be addressed.

The first is a consistent universal platform for voice and data connectivity. The recent decisions by Verizon, AT&T and many other wireless carriers to adopt LTE - and the move to include WiMax as a portion of LTE’s growth - put this possibility into play within the nex three years.

The second, announced as part of European Commission’s Commissioner of Telecommunications presentation at Mobile World Congress, is an end to egregious data roaming charges. While the iPhone’s move into cutting data into flat-rate pricing may have been partly on Viviane Reding’s mind as she warned mobile operators to fix excessive data roaming charges in the same way they fixed mobile voice charges - or risk having the roaming charge reductions forced up on them - the deadline of June 2008 can’t come soon enough. For Europe to gain the benefits of its union when it comes to easily moving between countries and still doing business at a reasonable cost, data roaming charges, and flat-rate data services for that matter, desperately need modernization.

The third area still outstanding - global data and roaming service agreements at a reasonable cost - may be addressed by external market forces as large conglomerates such as Telefonica, Vodafone, 3 and others find customer demand equal-price roaming across group countries. A move like this could have just as much bearing on the business strategies of small- and medium-size businesses as flat-rate intranational mobile voice pricing and services such as Vonage has had on trade between Europe and the US.

Jose Thinks - and podcasts - Streaming Media West 2007

2007-11-05T18:07:00.000-05:00

Jose Castillo, podcasting partner in crime from www.thinkjose.com on the Streaming Media Podcasts (www.streamingmedia.com/podcasts) interviews Jan Ozer of Doceo Publishing on the first day of Streaming Media West 2007.

This was our first joint interview since starting the podcast several weeks ago (I’m on the other side of the table manning the Popper Stopper) and Jan gave a great overview of his pre-day workshop as well as his software-based encoding session taking place on November 6.
This year’s Streaming Media West show was a positive in several ways. First, it continues to grow. Although it’s still a shadow of the same show back in the late 1990s (I remember moderating panels that had twice as many people as attended this year’s keynote) the show has attracted people from the various elements of streaming, including both suits & creatives.

The best keynote, for me at least, was the one I covered for my contributing editor duties at StreamingMedia.com, which had presentations from both Erick Hachenburg, CEO of MetaCafe.com, and also Betsy Scolnik of National Geographic (see the article at http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=9756). Good stuff, and a good reminder.

Opportunity: Author White Paper on Flash Video

2007-11-01T12:40:00.000-04:00

With the proliferation of Flash Video on the web, the recent announcement in Chicago at Adobe’s MAX 2007 conference that the newest versions of Flash Player and Adobe Media Player will include two new codecs was a welcome sign.

One of the codecs is a high definition profile of On2’s VP6 called VP6-S; the other is H.264, the videoconferencing standard codec that has also begun to take the broadcast world by storm.

Along with the announcement, which now brings the number of Flash Video codecs to four, there is an additional need for education on Flash Video and the options that each allow.

I’m honored to be asked to write a white paper on the topic; it’s been about six years since I stepped away from doing day-to-day market analysis, and I have to say I’ve missed it. This is a good topic to get my feet wet again.

This project also lets me do something I’ve not had a chance to do for several years: put a camera back in my hands to produce a set of video clips that will be used as reference material for the white paper.

More as the project progresses.

Wrapup: Panel @ TI Worldwide Developer's Conference

2007-03-07T12:32:00.000-05:00

Our panelists have just finished “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” video panel at Texas Instruments TIDC (the TI Worldwide Developer Conference held at Hotel Anatole in Dallas), a variation of the live webcast we did at TI’s headquarters back in December 2006.

The variation on this one was that we had a live audience and that we expanded beyond transcoding to get to an overall picture of the state of consumer video delivery on the web, on DVD and via IPTV.

The audience questions were good, and also reminded me of the continual education we have to do to separate the types of delivery, the myriad codecs and the actual content from each other, in order to provide a consistent set of “terms of art” to describe particular problems or opportunities. More on this when I have a few more moments. Right now I need to track down my bag, which US Airways forced me to gate check last night in Philly – and which still hasn’t shown up 12 hours later.

Opportunity: Panel @ TI Worldwide Developer's Conference

2007-02-05T09:23:00.000-05:00

As a follow up to the webcast in December for Texas Instruments, I just received an invitation to host a panel at TI’s Worldwide Developer Conference.

We'd like to broaden the scope slightly; the panel would be called "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Digital Video". There's a lot of good in the market including the improved quality of the new, advanced video standards. There are some challenges in how transcoding will be actually implemented, however, at various points in chain. And if some of the challenges in digital video don't get solved, things could get ugly. Transcoding wouldn't be the focus of the panel, but would still be discussed in the conversation.

Sounds like a good panel.

Wrapup: TI Webcast

2006-12-06T12:31:00.000-05:00

The return to article and white paper writing apparently is beginning to pay off again, as Texas Instruments approached me recently about moderating a webcast on transcoding.

Sound boring? Not at all, especially with an competent studio crew and an all-star cast of co-hosts, ranging from IdaRose Sylvester of research firm IDC; John Bishop, VP of Sales at Inlet Technologies; Bhupen Shah, a tech wizard who has been part of a string of successful startups – the latest being his current company, Sling Media; Gene Franz, TI Fellow, and Greg Jones, who heads up service provider relations at TI.

If you missed the live webcast, our friends at Texas Instruments have an archived copy of it available at www.ti.com/transcoding