Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Are you a digital immigrant?
CNet has a must read article on the digital divide. The divide the online news site discusses is the one between "digital natives" and "digital immigrants."
Digital natives are those 25 and younger, who have grown up immersed in the Internet, computers, and technology. Digital immigrants are the older group, especially 40 and above, who have had to "cross over" to the new digital world from the old, paper-based world.
As organizations retire more of the immigrants and are replacing them with more natives, the organizations are being changed. The old central command and central authority structures are being undermined and replaced by distributed command and control. Technology and the Internet are the catalysts for often informal lines of communication and collaboration that cut across top-down org charts and limit the ability of managers to "control" the work.
The challenge for communities is to help leaders recognize that this shift is taking place--that the old, authoritarian ways of making decisions in the community don't work anymore--the Internet lets citizens and businesspeople route around the old, top down procedures. If your community is worried that too many young people are leaving, could it be in part because they view community-decisionmaking as out of step with their needs and interests? Conversely, what is the community losing in jobs and opportunities because of outmoded control structures that are not able to lead the community successfully in the fast-paced, highly interlinked Knowledge Economy?
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Kitty Hawk and Mojave, California: SpaceShipOne wins the X Prize
Bert Rutan's SpaceShipOne won the $10 million X Prize by sending a ship into suborbital space twice in two weeks. The second of two successful flights took place today, and Mojave, California will likely become a historical milestone alongside Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
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Outsourcing and economic development
An op-ed piece in the NY Times (registration required) provides another data point to show that outsourcing jobs to other countries is not the national crisis the mainstream media has tried to make it.
The author provides data that shows the U.S., as other studies have suggested, is actually showing net gains from outsourcing. That is, outsourcing low pay, low skills jobs creates other business opportunities that more than offset the direct job loss.
As the author notes, this data is not a great comfort to a region that has lost those jobs. Factory floor workers who have had their jobs outsourced need training and help to be able to compete for the higher wage, higher skill jobs that are being created.
For rural communities, it's another indicator that business as usual just won't work. The Old Economy jobs being lost cannot be replaced by more aggressive industrial recruitment, better brochures, or a new logo--all things I've seen promoted as "proof" of a revitalized local economic development program.
What does work? Here are some things that are important in the Knowledge Economy:
- Recognition and acceptance that most new jobs are likely to be created by businesses already in your community. Action step: Diversify your economic development program into three parts: continue industrial recruitment (30% of resources), but add education, training, and support of existing local businesses (40% of resources), and create an entrepreneurship development program to create new, local businesses (30% of resources).
- Tightly couple technology council, chamber of commerce, and economic development efforts. In some communities, all three entities are working in stovepipe efforts with little or no cooperation and are often competing with each other for the same community support and resources. Local leaders should withold funds if these groups do not work together on substantive projects.
- Make your community Web portal, your economic development Web portal, and your local government portals as good as they can be. Companies and entrepreneurs looking for a place to relocate use the Web heavily to make early relocation decisions. Without a strong, well-funded, and well-staffed Web effort, you are crippling your recruitment program.
- Make sure you have a regional technology master plan. This is a vital tool for recruiting companies and entrepreneurs into the area. Even if you don't have affordable broadband in some places in your region, having a plan to get it there puts you well ahead of communities that are not doing the planning. Master planning also can save tax dollars and lower the cost of doing business in your region--another recruitment tool.
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AT&T slashes residential VoIP prices
In an indication that the company intends to provide still competition to the regional telephone companies, AT&T has cut their CallVantage VoIP service price by 25%, from $40/month to $30/month.
CallVantage, which works only if you have broadband service, provides local and long distance service nationwide for a flat $30 a month--the lowest call plan we've ever seen, including those offered by some of the cellphone providers.
When you add up how much money the residents and businesses of a community are stuffing in envelopes every month for phone service, it turns out it is a lot of money. Broadband, despite the cost, can produce savings in other areas, like phone service. Anything that helps keep a community more of its money (i.e. broadband) is a very good thing.
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RadioShark brings timeshifting to your desktop
Griffin's RadioShark is another piece of the convergence puzzle falling into place.
The RadioShark is an AM/FM tuner that plugs into your computer via a USB port. You can listen to broadcast radio in real time through your computer speakers, but of course, an old-fashioned analog radio would do that as well.
The RadioShark comes with software that allows you to record broadcasts and listen to them later. So if you can't listen to Al Franken or Rush Limbaugh at work, your computer can record those and play them back later.
For iPod fans (both Mac and Windows iPod owners), the software is fully integrated with iTunes, so you can transfer the recorded broadcasts to your iPod effortlessly and take them with you.
What I'd like to see is an integrated AM/FM/TV tuner that does all this. You can buy the TV tuner and record television programs on your hard drive, and the RadioShark does the same for radio. But I want fewer devices that do more. It's only a matter of time before someone combines these functions into one simple box.
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Who do you know?
Following up on the new Book of the Month (The Hidden Power of Social Networks), here are some of the conclusions from the book, and they may surprise you.
- It costs an organization or business money to foster collaboration and to support it over the long term. Too many organizations pay lip service to the notion of collaboration but don't do what it takes to support it or make the changes needed to encourage it.
- Technology and personal expertise does not distinguish high performers. In other words, having a lot of technology stuff and being good at using it does not, in and of itself, make a person more effective. The authors caution that workers do need the appropriate technology to do their jobs, but a lot of toys do not make someone smarter or better.
- One of the best predictors of high performance workers is how diversified their personal network is--the more diversified it is, the more likely they are ranked above average. In other words, who you know is what is important, more so that what you know, because the authors indicate that "relationships are critical for obtaining information, solving problems, and learning how to do your work."
I've been collaborating with Rick Smyre of Communities of the Future on capacity-building needs for organizations and communities, and one of the key concepts we have identified is "learning webs."
A learning web is a small group of people who have a strong trust relationship and who are committed to helping each other learn about and stay current with new ideas, concepts, and information that may be important to individuals in the group.
Do you have a learning web? What about your personal relationship network? Do you have a small group of people with whom you are comfortable asking for help? What about your community? One of the things you can do to help your community get connected with the Knowledge Economy is to help form learning webs centered around economic development, civic affairs, and local governance.
Technology does have a role to play in learning webs. A new generation of inexpensive, powerful Web portal software makes it easy to create a community Web site portal that can be used easily to set up and help support local learning webs.
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How work gets done: Social networks in practice
The Hidden Power of Social Networks (by Rob Cross and Andrew Parker) is the Book of the Month.
In the Manufacturing Economy (1850 to 1950), where you were located mattered because stuff was heavy. Being near an airport, a highway, or a river was a key part of an economic development strategy. In the Information Economy (1950 to 2000), what you had mattered. What kind of technology you had--computers, networking equipment--often created a competitive edge, especially in the last ten years of that era.
In the Knowledge Economy, many goods and services are weightless--software, music, and videos can be delivered over the Internet, among many other services and products. Location is less important, and if you don't already the computers and networking stuff, your business is dead or nearly so. So what counts in the Knowledge Economy?
In the Knowledge Economy, we are awash in an ocean of information. We can't possibly absorb all of it. It flows into our computers in an ever-increasing torrent. It is now impossible to master any field of study; there is simply too much to know. Collaboration is fast becoming not just a nice thing to do, but a business and organizational necessity. To survive and prosper, you have to have a trusted network of associates, peers, and colleagues to whom you can direct questions and get answers.
In the Knowledge Economy, who you know is what matters, not where you are or what kind of technology you have.
Having said that, developing and maintaining a network of reliable colleagues is hard work--but with a big payoff. This book delves into why these networks are effective, how to set them up, and how to maintain them. It is thoughtful and well-written, and mildly academic in style, but the chapters are short and to the point. Reading this book won't put you to sleep. I think it is well worth a read.
For past Books of the Month, visit this page.
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Light poles are worth $7,666
The New York Times (registration required) has an interesting article on municipal WiFi and the role of local government in jumpstarting broadband access.
One nugget buried in the second page of the article is that the City of New York got $23 million in return for access to 3000 lightpoles in the city. Wireless providers will place antennas and small equipment boxes on the lightpoles. This means the value of the lightpoles is an astounding $7,666! I suspect the leases are probably for ten years, which brings the value down to $767 per year, that that still illustrates the potential for a pro-active local government to self-finance the transport layer of a modern telecommunications infrastructure in a community.
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The Knowledge Economy pharmaceutical company
I met a scientist and researcher a few days ago who is putting together a pharmaceutical startup in a very rural community. He owns several patents and putting together an operation to manufacture and market the new drugs. Size of the company? Approximately ten highly paid scientists, researchers, and marketers. Virtually all other operations will be outsourced.
This businessperson chose where he lives based on two criteria: great quality of life and the availability of broadband.
This story is being repeated over and over again across the country. Here's the question for rural communities: Do your economic development efforts (marketing, services, Web site) provide the information that businesspeople like this one want to make a relocation decision? How do you assess "success" in your economic development efforts? Do you have a formula that considers the value of microenterprises in your community? For example, are you still just counting heads as a measure of success?
By that, I mean if you don't have a way of considering the financial impact of ten scientist/researcher jobs on your community compared to ten factory floor jobs, you are in trouble (my guess is that one scientist/consultant/professional job could be worth as much as ten factory floor jobs).
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Virgin Galactic to build commercial spaceships
I've been writing for some time about the emerging Space Economy. Almost ten years ago, Virgin Atlantic, the big British media and airline company, registered "Virgin Galactic" as a trademark.
Virgin Galactic is now a real company, and has signed a contract with Mojave Aerospace, the company that owns the rights to SpaceShipOne, which is likely to win the X prize in the next couple of weeks by flying two suborbital flights in less than two weeks.
Why is the Space Economy important? The equipment, services, and support systems needed for space are not likely to be provided by $1/hour workers in Asia. Knowledge Economy companies all over the United States are likely to benefit from the high technology systems that will be needed--if they can compete successfully with other smart Knowledge Economy companies worldwide.
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