Video in the Virtual

The ongoing drive to the ubiquity of video communications is often seen as a technology play. User based services such as You Tube and UStream; the technologies of industry leaders such as Cisco and Polycom’s TelepPresence; and, the eventual video access of the iPad certainly have the WOW that piques our interest.

The real driver though lies not in the picture but in the very human need to remove barriers to understanding – it is the never ending quest to approach the reality of same space interaction.

Video – in ways audio alone cannot provide – allows us to duplicate more closely the visceral experience that drives our emotions which in turn moves our perception and ultimately our decision making.

The video genie is out and as the world’s infrastructure continues to evolve visual communications will change, in unforeseen ways, how we see the world and our roles in it.

~ Rich Scorza, Executive Vice President of Sales

Tax Day=Annual Scorecard

Every year at “tax time,” small business owners and entrepreneurs find ourselves writing checks to our friends at the state and federal government. Some years (like this one) they are smaller than others. Unfortunately, this does not mean we found a new “loophole,” but rather, it means one of two things:

1. We spent the year re-investing in our business to make it stronger in the long-term, or

2. Our business did not perform as well as we expected it would.

Conventional wisdom suggests that small business owners and entrepreneurs make lots more money than they report on their taxes and that they are very good at hiding their “real” income by running it through their businesses. While there are some that are well-versed at “gaming the system,” most of us are focused on scrapping for new business and looking for a) new ways to add value for our customers; b) pinch pennies to boost our slim margins; and c) keep our employees and families happy while we juggle multiple responsibilities to maintain our independence and keep our dream alive.

Our egos drive us to find ways to keep our business moving forward even when our bank accounts ask us why. We take on a multitude of personnel and financial liabilities in the belief that there is “Gold” at the end of the rainbow (full disclosure, I graduated in 1987 when Spandau Ballet was cool and their song Uncle Sam True was a “hit”). Believe it…

Selling yourself, your team and your business value are the order of every day. And, like most things in life the rewards come in small doses often times when you least expect them. These range from a new business opportunity with a long-time business contact, a phone call out-of-the-blue from a long-time prospect or a completely new business opportunity within an existing customer.

But, on Tax Day, reality is front and center. Good times are rewarded with large tax bills and lean times are met with mixed emotions… smaller payments to Uncle Sam, and more conservative financial behavior.

Have fun at your local Tea Party!

Microsoft vs Apple, Round 2

Microsoft is, once again, trying to break into a market a little too late. They have a new phone in development with the project code-name "Pink." The purpose of this phone? To allow fast, efficient access to social media. This would have been a good idea around three years ago when the iPhone was released to allow some kind of competition, but right now it seems to be Zune vs iPod again. There are millions of consumers who know exactly what an iPod is, but have never heard the word "Zune" in their lives. Why? Because Microsoft tried to break into a market Apple already had locked down.

The iPhone, the iTouch, and the iPad all have apps that allow the same kind of access to social media Microsoft is talking about. Apple has three years of product development on them, and that's even mentioning the plethora of smart phones out there offered by other giants (Google's Nexus One, for example) Microsoft has to compete with. It's true that the Zune already offers social media support, but that's not the same as integrating it into a phone.

Microsoft seems to be continually looking at what other companies are doing and simply re-packaging their products (Windows 7 feels very much like Snow Leopard, for example). They need to start innovating or they're going to be taken over very quickly, if it's not too late already.

Statement Of Purpose & Dedication

Given my relative youth in comparison to the other officers of the company, a Myers-Briggs certified inability to execute repetitive tasks, and my compulsive need to be funny, I was tasked to manage our social media presence as well as cultivate a social media plug-in for our services. My interest in the phenomena made me excited about the opportunity. While equipped with a few preconceived notions about various social media platforms, I tried to begin my education with an open mind.

As I approach the 1 year anniversary of my employment at 3D Virtual Events and what I know now to be my toe dip into the constantly evolving social media community, my only conviction is that I understand less about it now than I did with solely my preconceived notions.

However, my experiences and the subsequent realization that I hope drives entries to this blog is that our definition of community is transitioning from the real into the virtual. With each new user ID, we as individuals become denizens of a community whose requirement for citizenship is nothing more than a valid e-mail address. In return, we are given the freedom to engage IP addresses across geographic, ethnic, and religious borders. A freedom that allows us to portray ourselves not as the people we really are, but as the firewall protected personas we want to be.

So while we are trimming our autobiographies to 160 characters and carefully selecting our profile pictures, we are not just leaving out possible arrest records or unflattering candids. Also left out is the trust that can only be built when we see it, hear it, or touch it ourselves. A trust that without, will leave us incapable of genuinely feeling connected.

The purpose of this blog is to explore how technologies both hard and soft are enabling the transition into virtual communities and what the human experience may have gained or lost as a result.

I will also try to be funny.

To conclude, I would like to dedicate this blog to Professor Patrick Riley who inspired my passion for the relationship that exists between individuals and their social environments. While at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I was privileged to be a recipient of both his incredible knowledge as well his enthusiasm to share it with others. While not pretending to have any Tuesday's With Morrie-like relationship, my appreciation for the perspective he has given me warranted, if not a New York Times bestseller, TV movie, or Broadway play, at least a blog dedication.

Virtual Integration Part I

A new definition of team work and a pathway to new opportunities.

In Michael Hammer’s authoritative work – The Agenda: What Every Business Must Do to Dominate the Decade – he puts forth the concept of Virtual Integration. He suggests that for a company to succeed it must embrace his “radical” vision of virtual integration which includes doing the following:

1. See your business not as a self-contained company, but as part of an extended enterprise of companies that work together to create customer value.

2. Define your company in terms of the processes you perform, not the products or services you create.

3. Identify and strengthen the key processes at which you excel.

4. Outsource everything else to someone better equipped to do it.

5. Learn to work closely with others, not just on your own.

6. Be prepared to rethink your company’s identity and strategy in fundamental ways.

Now, in the spring of 2010, the way we strive to outsource non-core processes is a standard practice. We run our companies around our core competencies and off-load the rest in order to grow more quickly and profitably. When we see an opportunity to offer new, complementary and innovative services to our customers, we form a “strategic partnership” so that our customers can access these new services. This enables our customer to receive more value, while maintaining a relationship with a team of people that is very familiar with their business needs.

Virtual Integration also enables our team to grow and learn from others. As Keith MacFarland states in his book The Breakthrough Company :

Breakthrough companies seek to integrate new tools, processes, and ideas to help them better manage the growing complexity of their worlds, without, at the same time, losing the firm’s unique aspects that inspire people to give their best efforts.

We are always looking to prepare for the future, anticipate where our industry is going and how we can gain a competitive edge against our competitors. Most organizations look to a “product” or specific “tool” to help them succeed in their future endeavors. And, traditional planning processes assume we can predict the future. Neither of these premises hold true in today’s economy.

What companies that want to succeed must do today is to create a more “agile” organization that is responsive to customer needs and adaptable to market changes.

The World Is Smaller Now

Twitter has released an option to translate the language of tweets around the world to your native language. At first thought, this isn't really a big deal. We've been able to translate web pages for years, why does this matter?

The people who publish the web sites we can translate are, for the most part, professionals in a particular field. This means the site performs a very specific task, and shares very specific information.

Having automatically translated twitter feeds brings the world closer yet to full globalization. We can't think of this as a change that means you know what someone in France is eating for breakfast. This is interesting at first, but wears quickly. What's far more interesting is that we know what information people around the world are spreading. News will be spread faster than ever before, and from anywhere. Twitter has become, more than ever before, a global news feed.

No longer will we have to rely on CNN, the BBC, the Associated Press, or any other worldwide news network to know what's going on in the world. What we had before from English speaking countries will now be received from everywhere. We won't be viewing world events from the eyes of organizations that may have biased spins (intentionally or unintentionally) anymore, but a vast amount of personal accounts with which we can form our own opinions.

Of course, there are going to be issues. Twitter users in Italy misspell words and use slang as often as those of us in the US. That said, it's still a start, and an exciting one.

To Tech or Not To Tech...

That seems to be the question that everyone is trying to answer. Well, maybe the question really is how tech is too tech but that isn't a one-off of Shakespeare and therefore not worthy of a blog title.

But back to the premise.

As someone who has sites like Engadget, the Boy Genius Report, and CNET bookmarked in their multi-browser synced toolbar, I have been asking myself that question a lot lately. Don't get me wrong, I have accepted my geekdom. Heck, I even try to embrace it in a Rivers Cuomo horn rimmed rocker kind of way. But just when I feel like I have all of my technology firing on all processors, a new piece of hardware or web service comes along that makes me want to forsake everything and start all over as just a 31 year-old boy with an iPad and a dream.

Well my friends, and I call you my friends because that is pretty much the only people who follow my blog, that ends today.



As amazing as it sounds, I think I have finally formulated a new rule as it pertains to the pursuit of technology (Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Technology would have been a much better blog title, well, too late). And like any good rule or instructions for assembling furniture from IKEA, it's pretty simple. Don't be first.

I know...I know...I know...In our culture, telling someone not to be first is as ridiculous as informing them that Mountain Dew is not actually part of a balanced diet. But as a life long early adapter to just about everything that I thought would make girls like me more, I have come to the conclusion that the first generation of most technology stinks.

Overpriced, underpowered, incompatible, and usually replaced by 2.0 in a few short months, I have received far fewer longing glances from impressed passer-byes than I have "How do you turn this (explative) thing on?" from my wife.

Two acronyms, kids: HD DVD.

As a conferencing service provider, I have sat in on countless sales calls where someone from my team refers to our committment to advancing technologies, points at me, and then just keeps going like I was a 7th ballot inductee to a hall of fame there for the appearance fee and a free buffet. Because in the corporate environment, things just need to work properly. We've reached an era of technology in which I have actually heard a mother form a decent justification for giving her 10 year-old an iPhone. Wireless signals started at A, slid to B, hopped to G and has now hightailed itself to N. However, when a conference call has to go right, you'll find me on my landlocked office phone line and an ethernet cable nestled into my beta-less HP desktop replacement. Oh, and huge props to the ad exec who coined that phrased when asked "What the heck do we call an 8lb laptop?"

Now, there's no need to pass this blog along onto anyone you think might be pitching their tents to get in line for an iPad. However, if you know of any fence sitters, please send this their way. Hopefully, I can clear out a few weak willed suckers who might be in the line in front of me.

Just kidding.

But no, really, forward this to them. Now.