The Future Is More Than Facebook

The frenzy over Facebook is unprecedented.  There are many interesting dimensions to the story; the most interesting to me, is how the insiders are upping the number of shares they plan to unload on the public.  This does not give one confidence — that those with the most information have decided to reduce their long-term holdings the day before the company becomes public.  I am sure there will be a lot of coverage about that in the days ahead.  The more interesting story was presented by Rich Karlgard in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal this morning (See Rich Karlgaard: The Future Is More Than Facebook). Rich believes that the tech bubble is large, but more importantly he believes that social media is not the most important area of innovation.  He doesn’t ditz social media, but urges consideration of more important areas needing innovation including transportation, energy, electricity, food production, water delivery, health care, and education.  Great list! Rich poses the question for those who need to go places, which they most value: An iPad, a Facebook membership, or a car.  By 2050 there may be 9 billion people and 3 billion cars.  Will we have the right fuels and road access? Perhaps the Google driverless car is more important than Facebook groups.  In the world of manufacturing, a lot of smart money is going into 3-D printing, which can make physical objects from an artisanal model.  Rich believes that “Made in the USA” is about to stage a major comeback.  In the area of energy, who would have predicted that North Dakota would overtake Alaska in oil production.  Horizontal drilling technology is changing the world.  Rich poses a second choice: If America could have only one, would it choose Facebook, Twitter, or horizontal drilling? I agree with Rich that America remains the world’s innovator and is a country without limits.

Tags: 3D printing, bubble, energy, facebook, Google car, horizontal drilling, IPO, social media, technology, venture capital

The Future of the Internet

The following story was published in the April 2012 issue of  Sun and Surf Magazine

The Future of the Internet
By John R. Patrick

The future of the Internet in our lives is very positive but we are only about 10% of the way there. Of all the things that could be done online that would save us time and simplify our lives, only 10% of them are there. Travel and banking web sites are getting better, but we are still at the early stages of what is possible. Consider retail e-commerce. Although there has been continuous and steady growth of retail e-commerce, it still represents just 5% of total retail sales. Why isn’t it 25% or more? Much is written about that here at patrickWeb but the short version is that there are still a lot of lame web sites. “Click here for the location of our nearest dealer where you can visit” or “call to get a price on the product you just found” or “Click here to download this form, fill it out, and fax it to us”. It is no wonder that Amazon captured 28% of all online sales in the fourth quarter of 2011. One company out of 4 million retailers got more than a quarter of all the sales. Have you ever heard a friend complain about poor customer service at Amazon? They walk in the customer’s shoes and deliver a terrific experience. Most of the rest of the e-businesses in the world have a long way to go. And in the physical world, there are the ubiquitous clipboards at doctor offices where we take a pen and provide a lot of information that they already have.

The changes in Internet technology have been continuous for decades and there is no end in sight. For the past fifteen years, I have been writing about the evolution of the Internet by describing developments in seven key areas: Fast, Always On, Everywhere, Natural, Intelligent, Easy, and Trusted. In the following paragraphs, I will hit the highlights of some of the more important trends and developments.

Fast
Broadband in the U.S. is not a pretty story compared to other parts of the world. We are second after China in the number of broadband users, but 28th in the world in the number of broadband users as a percentage of our population. The problem is that there are too many lobbyists, and the FCC is a political organization. The new FCC head is a very smart guy with technology and business experience. He totally gets it. The only problem is that AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon have more lawyers than the FCC does. Meanwhile France is offering 100 megabit access for $90 per month and rolling out WiFi throughout the country. Thanks to the telco lobby, many states have banned the offering of WiFi by municipal entities. Every citizen in Greenland has Internet access. We have 31,000 post offices.

Always On
WiFi is part of the fabric of the world. The big shift is the streaming of data — not just tweets, but data from *things* — bridges, toll booths, traffic lights, buildings, cars, iPhones, Androids, handheld GPS devices, weather instruments, and health monitoring devices attached to people. The growth in creation of data is staggering. Of all the data in the world, 90% of it was created in the last two years. YouTube receives 60 hours of new video every hour – an hour every minute. Wikipedia has 4 million articles and 8,000 editors. Hospital physicians will soon be adjusting the drip rate on infusion pumps in the hospital from their office based on real-time data from the patient. WiFi-enabled infusion pumps will enable hospital administrators to know where the pumps are (they never have enough of them) and which ones need maintenance.

Everywhere
There are one billion computers (including tablets), one billion cars, 1.5 billion televisions, and 2 billion Internet users. Small numbers compared to cell phones — 5.2 billion paid subscribers. The Internet used to be where your PC is, but now the Internet is where you are.  Most of the cell phones are dumb but soon most of them will be smart and they will all have Internet access. The mobile web is unfolding and is taking part in creating data by streaming data to the Cloud and then consuming data by streaming it from the Cloud. When you take a picture on your iPhone, it goes into the photostream and from there to iCloud and from there to all of your other devices and, if you choose, to the devices of your friends and family.

Natural
Social networking has become fundamental to all aspects of our economy and society. Integration of social networking with a full range of web applications will evolve to become the primary means of finding jobs, finding employees, finding business partners, and collaborating on projects. The emerging issue is that many people, especially young ones, are a bit liberal with sharing their every movement — what they are eating, listening to, where they are headed, their current latitude and longitude, and where they slept last night. They are not thinking that some day they may run for office or interview for a job. A new protocol will emerge to enable people to “erase” things they placed on the Internet. The Europeans may legislate it. OpenSocial is an important new standard that will enable social media apps that work across all of the social media sites.

Intelligent
The Semantic Web is the next big turn of the crank for the evolution of the World Wide Web. Most web pages have links but do not have context. The words on the web page do not necessarily mean anything — but they could. For example, if a web page said “Join us for a concert by The Eagles at Kimmel Center in Philadelphia next Tuesday” that set of words could have a lot of context. Clicking on it could add the concert to your calendar, knowing what “next Tuesday” means. It would also know exactly where the Kimmel Center is and provide a map. The Eagles is a performing group that performs a particular genre and your music player would receive a list of suggestions of music they have recorded or links to live concerts under way at the moment and make recommendations about their music to your friends. This is the tip of the iceberg. The semantic web will lead us to a point where most of the interactions of web pages will be between computers, not between computers and people. The biggest growth of intelligence is occurring in the field of analytics. Exabytes of data are being stored. A byte is 8 bits (a bit is a zero or a 1) and represents one character. An exabyte is a 1 followed by 18 zeroes! Business Intelligence and analytics are poised to enable new insight into the mounds of data – “Big Data” — that are being accumulated. Analytics will enable businesses to make sense of the explosion of data, develop digital models of their business, and continuously adapt it to what is going on. IBM’s Watson successfully challenged humans on the Jeopardy Show, but what is more interesting is the ability for a primary care physician to call and get a recommendation based on patient symptoms and measurements they describe to Watson. Within a couple of seconds Watson technology will be able to review all available medical information in the world and make a useful suggestion.

Easy
Technology is not the easiest thing at times. There are many dimensions to “easy” but one good example is the Nintendo Wii. At a local senior center, members find the Wii to be their exercise coach. It is not just for kids! The iPhone and iPad have shown how easy it can be to get applications on a handheld computer. Amazon has done the same with the Kindle. Most companies still don’t get the idea that the Internet is about power to the people. If you can’t make it simple, people won’t buy it. Cloud computing has become the mainstay for me and for millions. The ease, convenience, and reliability of the Cloud is compelling. Add Dropbox to your laptop and your iPad and your iPhone and you have a completely replicated set of data – all of your data at your disposal wherever you are and with whatever device you may be using. How about the future of TV? Three of the most common remotes — BlueRay, Cable box, and TV — include 151 buttons. Even a savvy child could not possibly master this impossible user interface. Boxee TV has produced a good model of the future of TV – think of it like TV Guide on the web — but I suspect that an upcoming Apple TV will be what finally provides the needed regime change.

Trusted
This is the big one. Can we trust the Internet? Security technology is available to achieve much higher levels of security than is presently deployed both at enterprise and consumer levels. It is a constant battle and requires significant budgets and a lot of talented people to maintain the needed security. The equally important issue is privacy. The good news is that there are some good technology solutions available to help us control access to our Internet habits. The bad news is that politicians have gotten interested in the subject. Banks have our personal information and they are using it. Healthcare insurers have more information about our health than our doctors do. Nevertheless, there is much to be optimistic about when it comes to electronic medical records. Perhaps 25% of doctors and hospitals use them but they are not easily interchangeable and accessible. This will change over the next few years as the government adds dollar incentives to make it happen. The result will be better quality of care, better outcomes, and fewer errors. And, fewer clipboards.

In January, I gave a talk about the Future of the Internet and Healthcare at the SIIA Conference in New York. The slides and a video of the presentation can be found here.

About the author

John R. Patrick (john@patrickweb.com) is president of Attitude LLC and former vice president of Internet technology at IBM. Mr. Patrick was a founding member of the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT in 1994 and of the Global Internet Project. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives.  He is a director of Knovel Corporation, WebMediaBrands, Inc., and Western Connecticut Health Network. He is the author of Net Attitude: What It Is, How to Get It, and Why Your Company Can’t Survive Without It (Perseus, 2001).

About SUN and SURF

SUN and SURF Magazine is published quarterly and mailed to all property owners in Hammock Dunes in Palm Coast, Florida. The magazine currently has a circulation of approximately 1,000.

Tags: analytics, big data, cardionet, corventis, IBM, internet, Internet Technology, ipad, patientslikeme, social media, telemonitoring

My Doctoral Journey – Part 4

I really appreciate the support from my friends and family for my decision 17 months ago to begin the doctoral journey. I promised periodic updates and that is the purpose of this posting. I have now completed 27 credits of coursework out of the rquired 62 — approxmiately 43%. I completed a course in health care marketing in January and am now taking a course in health care economics. In December, I attended a second residency in Atlanta. The third residency will be in October. It will be an important step as it is the launching point from which I will be able to submit a proposal for my research study and dissertation.

The goal that every doctoral student shares is to successfully complete a dissertation as the final step in earning their degree. Some say that at least half of doctoral learners never complete their dissertation because of the incredible detail required to get a research topic developed and approved for research. A typical dissertation is 200-300 pages in length. Some consider the process more than challenging – a friend of mine told me he had an ABD degree – all but dissertation. A visit to Amazon and you can find a lot of books on how to “survive” a dissertation. I still remember the meeting with the academic review committee when I had to defend my masters thesis forty years ago. It seemed challenging at the time, but I can now see that it was nothing compared to what lies ahead for the doctoral dissertation.

I have completed a concept paper, which is the precursor to a proposal for a quantitative research study that I have in mind. The study relates to the cost of care and lives lost due to congestive heart failure (CHF). My mother passed away from CHF a few years ago and I learned a lot about the disease during her final months. As a member of the board at Western Connecticut Health Network, I can also see the impact from a hospital point of view. The concept paper is eleven pages long. Following are a few excerpts from the paper to share a few of the things I am considering.

Chronic heart failure (CHF) is the leading cause of hospitalizations and readmissions for the elderly, and accounts for a large share of developed countries’ healthcare expenditures. Although CHF is a condition for which hospitalization is often avoidable, nearly 20% of Medicare patients discharged from hospitals are readmitted within 30 days at a cost to Medicare of $15 billion annually.

The problem is that the frequent readmission of CHF patients to the hospital has a negative impact on the patient and the hospital. For the patient, it results in a reduced quality of life and a negative impact to their psychosocial and financial condition. For the hospital, it means using extra capacity for care while facing the risk of not receiving reimbursement for the associated cost. The purpose of my proposed quantitative research study will be is to answer the question of whether home-based telemonitoring with coordinated care could improve mortality and reduce hospital readmissions for patients with CHF.

Experimental research attempts to identify cause-and-effect relationships between variables by conducting a controlled experiment. The proposed research method I am considering would use a randomized controlled experiment in which patients are randomly allocated into two groups; one that receives pharmacological treatment with coordinated care (control group) and the other, which receives pharmacological treatment with telemonitoring and coordinated care (enhanced care group).

Telemonitoring makes it possible to gather daily data from patients in a consistent and automated manner. A wireless gateway device similar in size to a cellular telephone can automatically capture data from other wireless devises such as a weight scale, a blood pressure cuff, and a pulse oximeter to measure pulse and the level of oxygen in the blood (oxygenation). Since my last update, I have discovered several companies that have interesting technology for monitoring. These include cardionet.com and corventis.com. Around-the-clock access to a patient portal could display patient data and enable caregivers to respond proactively to the patient. For example, if the data from telemonitoring shows a sudden increase in the patient’s weight, a nurse might make a dietary suggestion or obtain authorization to make a change in medications.

There have been a number of similar studies but none have shown a significant benefit from telemonitoring. The research I have in mind would be focused on whether the right combination of healthcare delivery and technology can improve outcomes. The result could be improved quality of life for patients and, if the care plans are implemented in a cost-effective way, reduced financial risk for hospitals and the ability to invest more in their community healthcare mission.

I will have a further report on the proposal in a few months. In the meantime, I will be continuing with more course work. Since the program began one year ago, I have written 47 papers. Many more to come and then the big one! If everything goes right, I could be just a little less than two years from completion.

Index of stories about My Doctoral Journey

Tags: chf, dissertation, doctorate, e-learning, hospital, scholar, telemonitoring

Genesys XVIII

The 18th Annual Genesys Partners Venture Dinner — Gen XVIII– Monday night at the Union League Club in New York attracted more than 100 venture capitalists, investors, journalists, entrepreneurs, and industry executives. As always, Jim Kollegger — CEO of Genesys Partners and one of the pioneers of the information industry — was an elegant master of ceremonies. He introduced the various sponsors, next day panelists for the SIIA Conference, several startup CEO’s, and a few of us who have been around the block a few times, each to make some comments.

Like a broken record, I offered the normal upbeat view of the future of the Internet but prefaced my remarks by asserting that we are only 10% of the way there. In other words, of all the things that could be done on the Internet that would save us time and make our lives better, only 10% of them are there. It may sound low but consider retail e-commerce. Although there has been continuous and steady growth of retail e-commerce it still represents just 4% of total retail (as of the end of October). Why isn’t it 25% or more? Much is written about that here at patrickWeb but the short version is that there are still a lot of lame web sites. “Click here for the location of our nearest dealer where you can visit” or “call to buy the product you just found” or “Click here to download this form and fax it to us”. And of course there are the ubiquitous clipboards at doctor offices where we take a pen and provide a lot of information information that they already have.

I described one man’s view of the evolution of the Internet including the seven characteristics below. This parsed way of looking at the Internet has served me well for quite a few years. The things going on under each area continuously change and Jim asks me once a year to do a thumbnail sketch of my latest thinking.

Fast
Broadband in the U.S. is not a pretty story compared to other parts of the world. We are second after China in number of broadband users, but 28th in the world in number of broadband users as a percentage of our population. The problem is that there are too many lobbyists and the FCC is a political organization. The new FCC head is a very smart guy with venture and business experience. He totally gets it. The only problem is that AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon have more lawyers than he does. Meanwhile France is offering 100 megabit access for $90 per month and WiFi throughout the country. Thanks to the telco lobby, many states have banned the offering of WiFi by municipal entities. Every citizen in Greenland has Internet access. We have 31,000 post offices.

Always On

WiFi is part of the fabric of the world. The big shift is streaming of data — not just tweets, but data from *things*. Bridges, toll booths, traffic lights, buildings, cars, and health monitoring devices attached to people. Hospital physicians will soon be adjusting the drip rate on infusion pumps in the hospital from their office based on real-time data from the patient. The WiFi infusion pumps enable hospital administrators to know where the pumps are (they never have enough of them) and which ones need maintenance. The creation of data is staggering. Of all the data in the world, 90% of it was created in the last two years. YouTube receives 60 hours of new video every hour. Wikipedia has 4 million articles and 8,000 editors.

Everywhere
There are one billion computers (including tablets), one billion cars, 1.5 billion televisions, and 2 billion Internet users. Small numbers compared to cell phones — 5.2 billion paid subscribers. The Internet used to be where your PC is, now it is where you are.  Most of the cell phones are dumb but soon most of them will be smart and they will all have Internet access. The mobile web is unfolding and is taking part in creating data in addition to consuming it through streaming. When you take a picture on your iPhone, it goes into the photostream and from there to iCloud and from there to all of your other devices.  

Natural
Social networking has become fundamental to all aspects of our economy and society. Integration of social networking with a full range of web applications will evolve to become the primary means of collaboration. The emerging issue is that many people are a bit liberal with sharing their every movement — what they are eating, listening to, where they are headed, their current latitude and longitude, and where they slept last night. They are not thinking that some day they may run for office or interview for a job. OpenSocial is an important new standard that will enable social media apps that work across all of the social media sites. The Europeans may legislate it, but regardless, a capability is needed to be able to remove things from the social media.

Intelligent
The Semantic Web is the next big turn of the crank but the crank is moving slowly. Most web pages have links but do not have context. In other words the words on the page do not necessarily mean anything — but they could. If a web page said “Join us for a concert by The Eagles at Kimmel Center in Philadelphia next Tuesday” that set of words could have a lot of context. Clicking on it could add the concert to your calendar, knowing what “next Tuesday” means. It would also know exactly where the Kimmel Center is and that The Eagles is a performing group that performs a particular genre and your music player would receive a list of suggestions of music they have recorded or links to live concerts under way at the moment. This is the tip of the iceberg. The semantic web will lead us to a point where most of the interactions of web pages will be between computers not between computers and people. The biggest growth of intelligence is occurring in the field of analytics. Exabytes of data are being stored. Analytics will enable businesses to make sense of it, model their business and continuously adapt to what is going on. IBM’s Watson took on humans on the Jeopardy Show, but what is more interesting is the ability for a primary care physician to call and get a recomendation based on patient data they describe to Watson. Within a couple of seconds Watson will be able to review all medical information in the world and make a useful suggestion. Business Intelligence and analytics are poised to enable new insight into the mounds of data that are being accumulated.

Easy
Technology isn’t the easiest thing at times. There are many dimensions to “easy” but one good example is the Nintendo Wii. At a local senior center, members find the Wii to be their exercise coach. It is not just for kids! The iPhone and iPad have shown how easy it can be to get applications on a handheld computer. Amazon has done the same with the Kindle. Most companies still don’t get the idea that the Internet is about power to the people. If you can’t make it simple, people won’t buy it. Cloud computing has become the mainstay for me and for millions. The convenience and reliability of the clouds is compelling. Add Dropbox and you have a completely replicated set of data, wherever you are and with whatever device you may be using. How about TV? Three remotes — BlueRay, Cable box, and TV — include 151 buttons. Even a savvy child could not possibly master this impossible user interface. Boxee TV has produced a good model of the future of TV, but I suspect that an upcoming Apple TV will be what finally provides the needed regime change.

Trusted
This is the big one. Will we trust the Internet? Security technology is available to achieve much higher levels of security than presently deployed both at enterprise and consumer levels. It is a constant battle and requires significant budgets and a lot of talented people to maintain the needed security. The bigger issue will be privacy. (Stay tuned for the Firefox “do not track” feature). Banks have our personal information and they are using it. Healthcare insurers have more information about our health than our doctors do. Nevertheless, there is much to be optimistic about when it comes to electronic medical records. Perhaps 25% of doctors and hospitals use them but they are not easily interchangeable and accessible. This will change over the next few years as the government adds dollar incentives to make it happen. The result will be better quality of care, better outcomes, and fewer errors. And, fewer clipboards.

On Wednesday I gave a talk about the Future of the Internet and Healthcare at the SIIA Conference. The presentation can be found here.

Other patrickWeb conference related stories

Tags: broadband, fcc, future, health, health care, Healthcare, IBM, internet, ipad, iPhone, jeopardy, john patrick, Mobile, opera, siia, social media, supercomputer, union league, WiFi

Aviation Rekindled

My interest in aviation began when I was stationed at MacDill Air Force base in 1970. My private pilot license was issued 1/15/1971, a mere forty years ago. A commerical license followed in 1976 and then an instrument rating in 1977. After moving to Connecticut in 1981, the flying days were over. The topic of aviation was rekindled by Nick Nash, a summer intern at IBM shortly after we had formed the Internet Division of the company 15 years ago. Nick went on to get a degree, magna cum laude, at Harvard. He is now a Vice President at General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm. Nick was an excellent communicator and he asked me one day if he could do an interview on the subject of aviation. Nick titled the interview “I really prefer having an engine!”

Ten years later, I got very interested in aviation once again when the Elipse 500 was announced. The Eclipse was the first of a new class of aircraft called the Very Light Jet (VLJ). With a number of breakthroughs in aviation technology, the Eclipse promised to offer a dramatically more affordable business model for jet aircraft. The small six-seat business jet is powered by two lightweight Pratt & Whitney Canada PW610F turbofan engines. Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt in 2008. A new company was formed recently and they are building a new version of the aircraft, to be called the Eclipse 550, with planned deliveries in 2013.

Another VLJ was announced in 2006 — the Embraer Phenom 100 — developed by Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer. The Phenom was much more appealing than the Eclipse — significantly more space, larger windows, and great performance. My partners at Executive Jet Partners LLC (EJP) and I ordered a Phenom in 2006 and just over three year later, I went to Brazil to bring it back to Connecticut. It was quite an adventure. See the full story here.

EJP is a private company owned by three retired executives in Connecticut who have a love of aviation.  Two of the three are private pilots and all three love to fly.  EJP took ownership of the Embraer Phenom 100 executive jet in October 2009.  The Phenom has six seats – two for the pilots and four for passengers. It is certified by the FAA for single-pilot operation, but most passengers are more comfortable with two pilots up front. It can fly 1,365 miles non-stop at 41,000 feet altitude at an airspeed of  435 mph. Like many aircraft owners, EJP makes the Phenom available for charter when the partners are not using it. We hope to make a business out of aviation charter. To make that happen requires a good partner who is an expert in managing aircraft. Enter Corporate Flight Management (CFM). CFM is a private Smyrna, Tennessee company that manages aircraft; provides marketing, dispatch, and scheduling; coordinates maintenance; and provides pilot services. (See the CFM blogs for some interesting aviation commentary). CFM pilots are experienced professionals and are trained and certified in the aircraft that they fly. CFM has a division based in Danbury, Connecticut and currently has seven airplanes in their fleet, two of which are Phenom 100s. See the entire CFM fleet here.

Chartering a private aircraft is not inexpensive, but it is incredibly convenient.  When sharing the cost among multiple passengers, the cost approaches first class airfare.  One of the many advantages of private aviation is that the aircraft can take off and land at thousands of airports not serviced by the airlines.  For example, if you have a business or a personal reason to go from Danbury, Connecticut to Springfield, Illinois, there are no direct flights. A connecting flight through O’hare in Chicago departs Laguardia at 6 AM and gets into Springfield at 9:18.  If you live in Danbury, you would have to leave home at 3:30 AM. The available return flights take four hours or more. One flight leaves at 12:15 PM (which leaves you about an hour for your visit) or at 6:20 PM, arriving into Laguardia at midnight and getting home almost 24 hours from when you got up. A charter flight can depart directly from Danbury at 7:15 AM and arrive in Springfiled at 9:15 AM. You can arrive at the Danbury Airport at 7:05 and be in the air at 7:15 AM. You can take whatever baggage you want and use your laptop from takeoff to landing. Without even mentioning amenities, the best part is the return flight. It would be scheduled whenever you choose to depart. You can bring as much baggage as you want and be productive for your entire flight. The cost would be significantly higher than a commercial flight, but the convenience is incomparable.

Charter is not for everyone. It is incredibly convenient albeit very expensive. But if you want to splurge for that special vacation in Florida, Canada, or the Bahamas, or if you have a business trip where productivity and your time are valuable, then charter is worth considering. When it comes to passengers on a charter, you can have the plane to yourself, or bring three to seven others (depending on what kind of plane you charter) with you at no additional cost — you charter an airplane, not a seat. An interesting approach to sharing is at Social Flights – a startup company that is using the power of the Internet to enable like-minded travelers to find each other and share the cost of a charter. If you have questions about a charter or want to get a no-charge quote for a flight, contact CFM  at 615-220-1761, or e-mail them at charter.dispatchers@flycfm.com. If you just want to chat further about any of this, feel free to contact me at john@executivejetpartners.com.

Tags: Aviation, brazil, charter, embraer, flying, phenom

Why You Should Embrace Your Company’s Heretics

CNNMoney’s Fortune published a story last week called Why You Should Embrace Your Company’s Heretics. The story was written by Polly LaBarre. I have not talked to Polly for ten years but we did attended a number of the same conferences back then. This new story described my evangelism of the Internet and she said some complimentary things. The story is accurate, but I never thought of myself as a heretic. One fellow board member who read the story sent me a note saying he thought heretics were burned at the stake. Back in 2006, Polly and Bill Taylor, founding editor of Fast Company Magazine, wrote a book called Mavericks at Work where they described 50 “mavericks”. I was one of them, but had not yet been promoted or demoted (not sure which it would be) to “heretic”. I was labeled with the term “rebel” by Gary Hamel in his Waking Up IBM: How a Gang of Unlikely Rebels Transformed Big Blue that appeared in the Harvard Business Review in April 2001. A few months before that, Fast Company magazine published an interview I did with Polly where we talked about technology futures (see Think Ahead: John Patrick). The only heretic I can think of is ”Homer the Heretic” — an episode of The Simpsons‘, which originally aired in 1992.

Tags: CNNMoney, Fast Company, Fortune, Fortune Magazine, Harvard Business Review, heretic, IBM, john patrick

Apple at Grand Central Terminal

It was a coincidence that I had a board meeting in New York City yesterday, on the day that Apple was opening it’s fifth retail store there. The store opening was planned for 10 AM with collector teeshirts to be given to the first 4,000 visitors. I arrived at Grand Central Station from Connecticut at 8 AM and there was already a line of 2,500 people. When I returned to the train station at 2PM, the shirts had been gone for two hours. I was one of the many thousands who visited the store, which will have 315 employees. Some day my grandchildren’s grandchilren will tell friends that their Pop Pop was there on opening day.  The Wall Street Journal reported that more people visit an Apple store each quarter than visit Disney’s four biggest theme parks in a year. It was quite a site to be there yesterday. I took some pictures but the one’s in the WSJ are much better. There is a short video done by Engadget that is worth looking at (see  Apple just arrived at Grand Central Terminal, we hop aboard video).

After visiting the new Apple store, I could not help but think about Steve Jobs. He will be revered for many generations as a great innovator and business leader. After you read his biography by Walter Isaacson, you will also respect this great biographer. I met Walter in 1996 just before he became editor of Time Magazine and I was greatly impressed with his embrace of the Internet. He came to IBM with some colleagues and we brainstormed about how the publisher might take advantage of the Web. None of us really knew the right strategy at the time, and unfortunately, the publishing industry still has not figured it out. Industry by industry, it was Steve Jobs who showed the way.

Steve Jobs – by Walter Isaacson is already the biggest selling biography of all times.  Jobs not only authorized the biography but gave Isaacson access to his home, his family, and his innermost thoughts over a two-year period leading up to just before his death. Great biographers write about great people. Isaacson’s books about Benjamin Franklin and Einstein were great but much harder for me to read. The Jobs biography read more smoothly in part because I could identify directly with the technology issues so aptly described in the book. I know or have met many of the characters in the book. Although not a technologist, Isaacson did a gret job in desscribing the technolgy issues in layman terms. He offered an insight that will help many readers better understand the impact and potential of technology.

The basic premise of the Steve Jobs philosophy was to create a simplified and integrated experience for the consumer. Critics say that the integration of iMacs, iPods, iPads, etc. with iTunes and Mac OSX represents a monopolistic strategy. After reading the biography, I suspect most people will be convinced that it was an intense desire to make things easier has been the driver. Jobs would say that products and profits are both important, but elegant and simplified products are most important. It was the intense drive and focus of Steve Jobs that made such products available to the mass market and catapulted Apple to become the most valuable company in the world. 

I continue to believe that the Amazon Kindle is the best platform for reading books, but I read the Steve Jobs biography on the iPad. 

Tags: apple, ipad, isaacon, steve jobs

Johannes Brahms

The Variations on a Theme of Haydn by Johannes Brahms was good, the Suite from The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was excellent , but the Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 2 was fantastic. His second symphony was composed by Brahms, the German compser,  during a visit to Austria during the summer of 1877. The composition was short compared to the reported fifteen years it took Brahms to complete his First Symphony. The second symphony was scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and a strings section. The Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra is 70+ in size and performed the symphony with great aplomb. It was the best orchestral sound I can recall hearing from the RSO in the three decades I have been listening to them. Maestro Steichen was masterful and articulated every detail of the Brahams composition. We are fortunate to have such a great orchestra in our community.

Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1833, 42 years after Mozart had passed away. He lived to be 64, much longer than normal at the time, and he was interred next to Beethoven and Schubert, two composers he greatly admired. I find it interesting that Brahms met with Wagner in Vienna and they listened to each others music. Among his works were the Hungarian Dances, four symponies, a half-dozen great piano sonatas, including the Ave Maria. I love music of all kinds, but on Sundays I listen only to classical music. I am grateful for Pandora which lets me select from so many excellent streaming channels. Today I listed to Boston Baroque.

Tags: brahms, classical music, germany, Ridgefield, symphony

Connecticut’s Power Woes – Epilogue

We got power restored at 5:17 PM on Monday night after an eight-day outage. As of 10 AM today (Thursday) there were still 1,124 customers in Connecticut not yet restored with electricity. Although that is less than 1% of the customers in the state, it represents several thousand people who are without power for a twelth day. No doubt there are some extreme and extenuating circumstances that are making it difficult for the repair crews to get back to 100%. The power company has offered to pay for an independent consulting study to examine disaster preparedness. That seems like a good idea. I hope they look carefully at the role that technology could play in the logistics of identifying the outages with precision and planning the optimum priorities for restoration. If every transformer had a sensor that could continuously report its status could that help? There are more than 100 million Apple iOS devices out there that, if their owners chose to activate the “Fine Me” feature, can have their location be identified by Apple’s iCloud. Does the electric company have a real-time display of their entire network that shows what is up and what is not? Can they deploy repair crews in a way that maximizes the restoration of power in the shortest time? I do not know the answer to these questions, but I hope they do. It seems to me that sensors could help a lot. The sensors would be powered by the electricity at the pole. The data could be sent using BPL technology that has been around for many years. If a pole or transformer stopped reporting, that would mean it has lost power and that would be reflected in the overall map of the electricity network. Analytical models could be used to create the repair strategy that makes best use of available resources. This might work better than having the need for 196 Connecticut politicians all calling for priority to their towns.

Tags: connecticut, electricity, generator, power, storm

Connecticut’s Power Woes Nearly Over

We got power restored at 5:17 PM last night after an eight-day outage. As of 2 PM on Monday there were still 53, 103 customers not yet restored with electricity. That is 4% of the customers in the state. Someone today told me the average household is three people. If so, that means there are more than 150,000 people without power for a ninth day.

Tags: connecticut, electricity, generator, power, storm