When I was a youngster, I was an avid fan of science fiction books, from Asimov to Wells. Somewhere around the time that TV consoles shoved book cases into unreachable corners, I drifted away from books but still, all summer, went with my buddy Craig every Saturday to shout at the terrorizing antics of Godzilla or the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Much later, I glommed onto time-travel movies and TV shows, from Back to the Future to Quantum Leap and Journeyman.

The fun in all this was we knew that none of it would really happen, given the prevailing laws of physics and biology—but it might happen if we all were wrong by just a tiny bit.  Last weekend I sat through a new science-fiction movie that, I think, convinced all of us in the theater that it was likely to happen unless we do things just a tiny bit more right.

Moon appears to be set in a future maybe a half-dozen decades or so away. Other than the voice of Kevin Spacey as a smiley-faced robot, the film has only one live character—sort of: Sam Bell. He’s a worker for Lunar Industries, Ltd., and is wrapping up a three-year contract mining helium-3 (a solar-wind-embedded source of fusion), which has become the Earth’s primary, seemingly inexhaustible source of energy.  The mining, on the dark side of the moon, is carried out by four monstrously large automated machines prophetically named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Sam, the only person staffing the lunar base, keeps an eye on the machines and controls, heading out in a lunar rover to gather up the helium-3 from the devices and rocket the canisters to Earth.

(SPOILER ALERT—Stop here if you plan to see the movie; go back and enjoy the links above)

It turns out that Sam is one of innumerable clones of the original Sam Bell—the company keeps a plentiful supply of Sams in morgue-like drawers in the basement, onboarding a new one whenever the previous Sam becomes disposable—and is disposed of.  Through accidental circumstances, two of the clones meet—and plot—in a mind-bending set of scenes.  The shots of Sam playing a spirited game of ping-pong against himself are particularly disconcerting.

All of this seems much too plausible to me, given the space program’s thrust (so to speak) to go back to the moon to find minerals and potential energy sources, as well as the accelerating pace of stem cell research.  The issues we’re communicating today—many of them driven by the presence or lack of political will—before long may by comparison seem universally simple to resolve. 

While we are reaching out 30 or 40 years to envision the impacts of global warming, health care and electric vehicles, movie makers and market makers alike should be preparing for the really big changes and challenges ahead:  Mining the moon, medical miracles and—literally—making more of ourselves!

--Steve Friedman

Steven Rattner, Obama’s head of the auto task force and manager of General Motors’ and Chrysler’s restructuring and emergence from bankruptcy, left his post yesterday. The reason given for his departure, “to return to private life and his family in New York City.”

This is a plea to all those in the field of public relations. Please stop using “family” as the pat excuse for quitting, poor job performance, conflicts with company leadership, unethical practices, scandal, retirement or instead of simply stating that you’d like to do something else.

And reporters, editors, bloggers and others – stop reporting it. It’s not news. It’s a signal that something deeper needs to be uncovered.

Using family as cover is insulting and disingenuous. Family is the reason we all do what we do. Let’s show family the respect it deserves.

-- Leah Haran

 

Or did traditional media take too much time in the news-gathering process? Because if you were waiting for the day when you could finally start writing that case study titled, “The Day New Media Made Old Media Look Slow and Decrepit,” it would have been the day Michael Jackson died.

While news of the King of Pop’s passing originated on celebrity gossip site TMZ.com and spread like wildfire on Twitter, CNN was reporting only that Jackson had been rushed to the hospital.

Even though CNN, understandably, did not want to report on the death until their sources confirmed the story – especially after the Steve Jobs/iReport debacle last year -- they came away looking slow and behind-the-times.

Meanwhile, most outlets (including the local sports talk station I was listening to on my way home from work) were citing TMZ.com.

You can chalk it up to luck, or a case of not having a reputation to uphold, but TMZ was the clear winner.  It wasn’t until nearly two hours after the first reports of Jackson’s death surfaced that CNN finally called it.

But at that point, they were regurgitating what was already known rather than breaking news.

It begs the question: Does new media stand for speed and traditional media equate to accuracy?

As an aside, the contrast between the two anchors reporting the news – Dax Holt on TMZ and Wolf Blitzer on CNN – was almost laughable if it weren’t such an accurate representation of new and old media colliding.  By all accounts, Blitzer is an accomplished and accurate reporter of news, but his presence on the air as the story developed only served to reinforce the image of old media, albeit unintentionally.

Score one for new media.

-- Brad Marley

 

I’m determined that, some day, I’ll find the time to put together the coffee-table book that has been percolating in my head for a decade or so.  It’ll be called “Where’d It Go?” or “Whatever Happened to Baby Ruth?” or some similar title that reflects the silent, rapid, baffling disappearance of those objects that once formed the foundation of our daily personal and business lives.

Certainly the book will include full-color pages on carbon paper, wooden clothes pins, Coke bottles, typewriters, Wite-Out, rooftop TV antennas, ¾-inch tape machines, record players, answering machines, carburetors and goose horns.  But the longer I delay publishing the book, the longer and heavier the book becomes, for now I must consider adding first- and second-generation technology that is being replaced by subsequent generations.  So I’m also reserving pages for:

• Videotape

• Telephone keypads

• Phone booths

• Toner cartridges

• File cabinets

• Offices with doors

Beyond the never-ending obsolescing of our favorite products, however, I’m running into another nagging issue.  None of these items has really totally disappeared.  Many businesses in cold climates still prefer carbon paper because carbonless systems don’t work well there.  Camera crews use wooden clothes pin every day to clip gels over powerful lights—the wood doesn’t absorb the heat.  The occasional columnist still literally pounds out his wares, and vinyl is becoming a prestige medium for music.

The fact that so many of these now useless devices have continued to draw so many users has made me reluctant to add print newspapers and magazines  to my ready-to-die list.  No matter how convenient the Web, no matter how uneconomical the alternatives, I have a strong feeling that the world holds a niche for the morning paper and the weekly mag, just as it does for mp3 and flash drives.

To update General MacArthur, newsprint doesn’t die; it just slowly fades away—but it grows on trees and will always be revived  by those who, lounging in their yard on a July 4^th weekend,  would rather fall asleep with the funnies covering their face than with a mobile phone in their eye.

And as for my coffee-table opus, on further reflection I’ve come to realize that my list of practically obsolete products has failed to include two other items that are ready to bite the dust (except for the nostalgic few of us) coffee tables … and coffee-table books.

--Steve Friedman

 

Lance Perry, vice president of IT Customer Strategy for Cisco, is my new productivity hero. A key theme of his keynote remarks at last week’s Midwest Technology Conference at the amazing MGM Grand Detroit Hotel was how to do more with less.  He spoke of Cisco’s and his own personal commitment to manage the amount of time spent on and in meetings.  How is Cisco going about this? It begins at the top: The CIO and CEO are asking employees to rely more on technology (Cisco technology that is) to spend less time in person and more time on line.  According to Lance, more is getting done and travel costs are plummeting.  Cisco took a first step in this mission to beat down the meeting by providing employees with computer-top cameras and technology that virtually connects them with their peers and customers. 

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is on a similar meeting theme, according to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal, in which Ballmer describes his new meeting management style:  gone are the long, drawn-out PowerPoint presentations; instead, he asks that PowerPoint decks be provided in advance of meetings, which are reserved for dialogue and feedback.  The result: tighter meeting agendas, better decision making, and more productivity.

Speaking of productivity, it was a major theme across the conference.  Specifically, how to use technology to promote productivity in a down economy.  Here again, Perry had good common sense to offer as he described the five things Cisco is doing to prepare for the economic turnaround: 1. Save to invest. 2. Unlock employee potential (let employees have a voice in technology purchases and usage; top down IT decision making is a thing of the past). 3. Drive customer intimacy (Cisco managers are encouraged to visit customers in person at least quarterly). 4. Outpace the competition. 5. Transition to a borderless enterprise.

The attendance and quality of speakers/content at the Midwest Technology Leaders Conference helped to invigorate and refresh my interest and enthusiasm for technology innovation – right here in Detroit.  Perhaps it is a sign of better things ahead.

-- Lisa Vallee Smith

 

Pick up any healthcare information technology trade publication – even just about any major newspaper – and you’ll see the terms “meaningful use” attached to nearly every article touching on HIT incentives in the stimulus.

What does “meaningful use” mean?  Kathleen Sebellius, director of the Department of Health and Human Services, will need to figure it out. Until then, the healthcare and healthcare IT industries have taken it upon themselves to help define what “meaningful use” of healthcare IT should embrace – that is, what makes healthcare IT truly meaningful.

HIMSS started an online discussion forum, asking its members to weigh in on what should constitute “meaningful use.” Compuware Corporation launched a Website – www.meaningfuluse.org – in partnership with the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems to serve in large part as a vehicle for discussion in the medical community about the “would-be” components of “meaningful use.”

Despite the absence of a hard-and-fast definition of “meaningful use,” the guiding principles inlaid in those terms are becoming clearer. In recent testimony before the National Committee on Vital and health Statistics, Mark Leavitt, chairman of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology or CCHIT – the federal certifying body of interoperable EMR systems dedicated to accelerating healthcare IT adoption – stated, “The major parameters are actually written into the bill.  It has to be a certified EHR, it has to include e-prescribing, it has to be able to exchange information and it has to be able to report quality data.”

As healthcare IT marketers, we’ll take clarity over ambiguity any day, since clarity and definition surrounding “meaningful use” can help drive strategies that can address and embrace the present and the future to accelerate sales. But in the absence of a clear definition of “meaningful use,” what’s a healthcare IT marketer to do?  Wait for Washington and the industry to come together to help dictate strategy, or do we use what we have to forge ahead?

I believe the best marketer’s view not having all the answers not as a challenge, but as an opportunity to define what the answers could be. They take bits of knowledge and use them to create a vision for what’s next based on the value propositions of the companies and products they represent.

If we know that certification, e-prescribing, interoperability and quality reporting are the bits of knowledge available, it’s the proactive HIT marketer that spends time talking to decision-makers about how their products meet and exceed these requirements, and are nimble enough to adapt to the yet-to-be-known.

By embracing uncertainty rather than fearing it, HIT marketers lay the foundation for organizational thought leadership, which adds more long-term strategic value than success with any single product or service ever could.

-- Brian Barthelmes

 

You have to give it to the automakers, despite bankruptcies, government control, slumping sales and a perception that innovation is lacking, they continue to move forward. This was evident at the Telematics Detroit show held in Novi this week, where you could find representatives of all the major automakers actively engaged in conversations to find the latest telematics innovations for the vehicle.

Look at how Ford Sync, powered by Microsoft, has been a major factor in its emergence and clearly consumers’ expectations for vehicle technology innovation is high.

Airfoil client UIE Automotive showcased its new mobile technology platform, myCar™ , at the show. UIE Automotive’s myCar™ platform connects vehicles with owners on their mobile devices, showcasing connected services on the iPhone from Apple and RIM’s Blackberry Bold. WWJ’s Matt Roush called it “the coolest thing I saw,” and many other attendees reacted similarly. Innovations like myCar™ will be what fuels the comeback of GM and Chrysler.

There’s no doubt attendance was down, but that’s nothing new. While tradeshow attendance and exhibition may be down, the quality of conversations at these events for those still willing to make the investment is high.

So despite GM’s bankruptcy announcement, life went on this week for the auto industry and if you can have a little faith, there’s a sunny day down the road once the clouds clear.

-- Tim Wieland