No, what follows is not a poem. It's a list, two lists actually as I turn 70 and having spent 50 years in the digital information business...
Five Observations
1. New technology and new data continue to leap-frog and recycle each other
• 1962 FORTRAN punch cards with data appended at Trinity. 1967-69 timesharing, TDMS, Lexis, Internet, regression analysis at the Pentagon. 1969 timesharing plus economic data at DRI. 1983 Bernoulli cartridges and Compustat at Isys. For Lotus in 1985-88: CD-ROM and Compustat at OneSource, FM sideband and stock prices at Signal. 1989 FM sideband, TSR software and integrated news wires at Desktop Data/NewsEdge. 2002 web analytics and internet access at Compete.
• Timesharing --- PCs --- Phones/tablets/TV --- cloud (timesharing again)
2. It’s not about the technology or the data, it’s about the apps
• Apps provide the value for users. Killer apps are key to sales: Product line forecasting for DRI. Screening company fundamentals for Isys and OneSource. 1-2-3 computing of portfolio values in real time for Signal. Personalized alerts for NewsEdge. Web comparisons versus rivals by Compete.
• Selling capabilities is not like selling apps (timesharing companies vs data publishers in 1977.) Sales and renewal pace of OneSource and Signal didn’t match Lotus’ packaged software cycle. Microsoft failed repeatedly at info. Dow Jones/Reuters failed at delivery (Bloomberg got it right with archaic technology.) There is no new intrinsic magic in SAAS or the Cloud – we’ve seen it all before at DRI
3. Customers learn, markets evolve
• Disruptively innovative apps initially require consultative selling, teaching and support: Enterprise selling at DRI, Desktop Data, Compete. Service consulting at DRI. Quarterly client in-house presentations from Compete. Market was not ready for channel or retail sales of OneSource, Signal in 1985-88.
• As they learn, users want direct interaction, cheaper and more accessible tools, less support. Pricing and packaging must change. The Internet taught multitudes how to “go online” for info.
• Compete’s $100,000/year vertically-focused services in 2002 vs free, funnel-filling Compete.com in 2008.
• Lesson: distinguish data/infrastructure cost from consulting/selling cost right from the beginning, even if selling bundled packages. This will facilitate restructuring as the market matures.
4. Business models must evolve
• Digital information is “competitive destruction” and “destructive innovation” on steroids (Joseph Schumpeter, Clayton Christensen.)
• “Damn the profits, grow the users” Internet stymied NewsEdge.
• Today, enterprise sales giving way to B2C selling to businesspeople.
5. The team matters
• Smart, innovative and effective people who really “get” the new intersections of tech and data are required to create the new killer apps.
• Shared vision, coordinated focus are necessary: “Make revenue grow.”
• Trust, integrity, empathy paramount. Destructive internal competition is cancerous
• Privilege to build repeatedly on trusted colleagues. Privilege to build new company with new colleagues of the same character.
• The old team must keep learning themselves, and hire and listen to young entrepreneurs who “get it” now.
• Family and long-term friends matters. Figure out how to maintain balance, at least over time but don’t wait too long. In the end, entrepreneurial businesses are just very exciting jobs, and family is forever.
Five Predictions
1. It’s not over! Huge amounts of new data becoming available (more consumer tracking, more consumer generated content.) Machine reporting (real time all the time.) Easy new entry (Ruby on rails, cloud computing.) Seed funds/angels increasing. Mobile everywhere. Video everywhere. More people will recognize that privacy is an illusion. Many more ad dollars to move online. Today’s young entrepreneurs grew up digital – admire and support their product innovations.
2. Enterprise selling is dead. It died with the birth of this new generation of digital marketers to whom big brands now give big authority. Welcome B2C selling to business. (Still must teach really new stuff.)
3. Cyberattacks will become warfare, cyber-disclosure too. Iran centrifuges. Drones: videogames with real deaths. US powergrid. Freeway seizure. Digital security will be a growth business. Let’s just hope the smart new kids at MIT work for our side.
4. Someone will solve the online authority issue. “Which of all this stuff should I believe, whom should I follow?” Watch for social-search: “Of all the search responses , what did people I respect find most useful?” - Google+? Facebook? Most likely, some entrepreneur we haven’t heard of.
5. TV plus social is a new, big thing. TV won’t die, it will continue to be a primary stimulus to consumers. Social networks will identify who is engaged, who is influencing, who is listening; online will extend the moment of TV (both before and after the show/ads.) Real time response and brand/opinion shifting over time will need to be measured and analyzed. Nielsen is an easy target with a big price umbrella. Google TV? Apple TV? Bluefin Labs?
Postscript
Yes, the right team makes a difference. My privilege is to have been surrounded by really smart, innovative and effective people. They have been trustworthy, loyal and insightful in good and bad times. They mattered to our companies; They made revenue grow! They matter to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Friday, February 24, 2012
Sunday, December 11, 2011
So What?
Tents gone, ground scraped clean by front-end loaders, posters power-washed from the wall, forty final stalwarts in jail, poets gone home, Dewey Square unoccupied. So what?
So, 99% is no longer a statistic. The Ninety-nine Percent is a cause, it has a constituency and it is part of the national debate across the Internet, TV and newspapers. It is likely to effect the Presidential and Congressional elections next year. It will certainly impact the Senatorial election in Massachusetts.
But, the work is not done. Our leaders are a national embarrassment, bickering while we lack a uniting vision. America deserves better. We need representation and representatives beyond pledges and campaign funds.
It’s time for reform: make the lobby-ownership of Congressmen transparent, split banks too big to fail, tax all of us fairly and cut spending strategically so that Greece, Ireland and Italy are places we can visit and not models for our economic policy.
Business needs the confidence to hire and invest; workers need pride in their work and in their companies; bridges, towns and roads need repair and construction needs to get back to work.
Most of all, one hundred percent of us need a reason to believe in ourselves as one country. What’s next requires poetry as much as politics and economics.
So, 99% is no longer a statistic. The Ninety-nine Percent is a cause, it has a constituency and it is part of the national debate across the Internet, TV and newspapers. It is likely to effect the Presidential and Congressional elections next year. It will certainly impact the Senatorial election in Massachusetts.
But, the work is not done. Our leaders are a national embarrassment, bickering while we lack a uniting vision. America deserves better. We need representation and representatives beyond pledges and campaign funds.
It’s time for reform: make the lobby-ownership of Congressmen transparent, split banks too big to fail, tax all of us fairly and cut spending strategically so that Greece, Ireland and Italy are places we can visit and not models for our economic policy.
Business needs the confidence to hire and invest; workers need pride in their work and in their companies; bridges, towns and roads need repair and construction needs to get back to work.
Most of all, one hundred percent of us need a reason to believe in ourselves as one country. What’s next requires poetry as much as politics and economics.
Friday, November 11, 2011
On Reading at Dewey Square October 27 2011
That day it felt good to stand in the 40-degree rain in Dewey Square – a kind of solidarity-in-misery with Occupy Boston. The rain was persistent, but had a feeling of equality as it fell fairly on the 1% as well as the 99%.
Organized by Peter Desmond, Robyn-Su Miller and Susie Davidson, poets contributed their verses to the protest at 2pm each day of the fourth week of the occupation. Alice Weiss was the featured poet on Thursday October 27th, and led off with a dedicated poem, “Dewey Square.” I read my poem for the occasion, “The Bankers’ Song.” Another dozen poets read their poems of resistance, inequality and distress.
There was no thunderous response, the One-Percenters didn’t quake and renounce their wealth, no unemployed found immediate work, and Congress didn’t unite around the needs of the nation. The Occupiers just occupied their tents and the two yellow-slickered police shifted glumly in their heavy brogans. There was only the rain-muffled clapping of cold wet hands and a few warm smiles – mainly of the poets themselves. No bang, hardly a whimper.
So standing in the rain, why did this reading feel good to me? Why does it still feel good at the laptop in my warm house? It has to do with taking a stand, making a statement about me, mainly to myself I suppose. I have moved out from the middle, from the independents, from the uncommitted to take a position that too-big-to-failers need to be accountable for taking too much risk, that it is not OK for the 99% to falter while the 1% prospers, that America can do better.
Behind the sometimes microphone in Dewey Square, hung a soggy sign taped to the granite walls of the exhaust duct for the sunken South East Expressway: “We are the majority, we will not be silenced.” That wet afternoon, no one tried to silence us and few even listened, but I was able to hear what I have to say.
Organized by Peter Desmond, Robyn-Su Miller and Susie Davidson, poets contributed their verses to the protest at 2pm each day of the fourth week of the occupation. Alice Weiss was the featured poet on Thursday October 27th, and led off with a dedicated poem, “Dewey Square.” I read my poem for the occasion, “The Bankers’ Song.” Another dozen poets read their poems of resistance, inequality and distress.
There was no thunderous response, the One-Percenters didn’t quake and renounce their wealth, no unemployed found immediate work, and Congress didn’t unite around the needs of the nation. The Occupiers just occupied their tents and the two yellow-slickered police shifted glumly in their heavy brogans. There was only the rain-muffled clapping of cold wet hands and a few warm smiles – mainly of the poets themselves. No bang, hardly a whimper.
So standing in the rain, why did this reading feel good to me? Why does it still feel good at the laptop in my warm house? It has to do with taking a stand, making a statement about me, mainly to myself I suppose. I have moved out from the middle, from the independents, from the uncommitted to take a position that too-big-to-failers need to be accountable for taking too much risk, that it is not OK for the 99% to falter while the 1% prospers, that America can do better.
Behind the sometimes microphone in Dewey Square, hung a soggy sign taped to the granite walls of the exhaust duct for the sunken South East Expressway: “We are the majority, we will not be silenced.” That wet afternoon, no one tried to silence us and few even listened, but I was able to hear what I have to say.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
The Very Hungry Bank
with appreciation for Eric Carle’s caterpillar
One sunny morning before Dewey Square
was financial, there appeared - pop! –
a tiny and very hungry bank.
In 1991, BayBank acquired Harvard Trust
but the bank was still hungry
In 1996, BankBoston acquired BayBank
but the bank was still hungry.
In 1999, FleetBank acquired BankBoston
but the bank was still hungry.
In 2004, Bank of America (itself acquired
by NationsBank) acquired FleetBank
but the bank was still hungry.
In the next years, the bank acquired one
MBNA, one Banco Itau, one US Trust, one
LaSalle Bank, one Countrywide and one
Merrill Lynch.
That year the bank had a stomach ache. Now
it wasn't a tiny little bank any more. It was a big
fat bank. It built a forty-five billion dollar safety net
called a TARP around itself, and stayed inside for a number
of months. Then it nibbled a hole in the TARP, and pushed
its way out. Alas, it was not a beautiful butterfly.
One sunny morning before Dewey Square
was financial, there appeared - pop! –
a tiny and very hungry bank.
In 1991, BayBank acquired Harvard Trust
but the bank was still hungry
In 1996, BankBoston acquired BayBank
but the bank was still hungry.
In 1999, FleetBank acquired BankBoston
but the bank was still hungry.
In 2004, Bank of America (itself acquired
by NationsBank) acquired FleetBank
but the bank was still hungry.
In the next years, the bank acquired one
MBNA, one Banco Itau, one US Trust, one
LaSalle Bank, one Countrywide and one
Merrill Lynch.
That year the bank had a stomach ache. Now
it wasn't a tiny little bank any more. It was a big
fat bank. It built a forty-five billion dollar safety net
called a TARP around itself, and stayed inside for a number
of months. Then it nibbled a hole in the TARP, and pushed
its way out. Alas, it was not a beautiful butterfly.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
The Bankers' Song
Take a mortgage, equity loan
enjoy yourself, it's just your home.
Spend it through our debit card
the terms are easy, it's not hard.
It's only paper, play the game
we'll package yours with more the same
and sell them to some naive folks
then sell short this cruel hoax.
Now if you fail and need salvation
we profit big, go on vacation
chuckling that the whole thing's legal
because the Feds repealed Glass-Steagall.
If, perchance, our math is wrong
we'll sing to Congress our sad song
fly there in our private jets
and ask for public safety nets.
None of us will go to jail
it's private pay and public bail.
We banks are just too big to fail
it's private pay and public bail.
enjoy yourself, it's just your home.
Spend it through our debit card
the terms are easy, it's not hard.
It's only paper, play the game
we'll package yours with more the same
and sell them to some naive folks
then sell short this cruel hoax.
Now if you fail and need salvation
we profit big, go on vacation
chuckling that the whole thing's legal
because the Feds repealed Glass-Steagall.
If, perchance, our math is wrong
we'll sing to Congress our sad song
fly there in our private jets
and ask for public safety nets.
None of us will go to jail
it's private pay and public bail.
We banks are just too big to fail
it's private pay and public bail.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Magi
"...no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation"
TS Eliot, The Journey of the Magi
One tree only in our house, decorated
with tinsel and tradition. Eliot’s Magi
saw three trees and an old white horse
that galloped away leaving them
uncertain about birth or death.
This dawn in our house, Jesus sleeps
and the Magi are mute, so I hear
invitation in the poet’s soliloquy
and cannot be innocent. Quiet
and disquiet won’t remain. Arriving
are not Kings, but the bustle of family
and a new grandchild. We celebrate
innocence, giving, wonder. Our day
clamors with happy unwrapping
the clatter of dishes and love. Still
in the evening, I don’t leave with the Magi
transformed and glad of another death. Skeptical
I slip from the poet’s god as the poet’s voice
slips from me until it is just an uneasy
murmur of hearing and disbelief.
TS Eliot, The Journey of the Magi
One tree only in our house, decorated
with tinsel and tradition. Eliot’s Magi
saw three trees and an old white horse
that galloped away leaving them
uncertain about birth or death.
This dawn in our house, Jesus sleeps
and the Magi are mute, so I hear
invitation in the poet’s soliloquy
and cannot be innocent. Quiet
and disquiet won’t remain. Arriving
are not Kings, but the bustle of family
and a new grandchild. We celebrate
innocence, giving, wonder. Our day
clamors with happy unwrapping
the clatter of dishes and love. Still
in the evening, I don’t leave with the Magi
transformed and glad of another death. Skeptical
I slip from the poet’s god as the poet’s voice
slips from me until it is just an uneasy
murmur of hearing and disbelief.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The Holiday Letter
Often pictures, mostly prose
How do they choose what they expose -
The births and dogs and college choices,
Sports awards, cherubic voices;
Kids are perfect, health is great,
One has found the ideal mate;
They’ve travel to some scenic dell
Or sometimes had the trip from hell;
New grandparents who boast out loud
That reproduction makes them proud;
It’s not all joy, sometimes there’s doubting,
True confessions, subtle outing;
She’s been hurt and he’s addicted,
Painful cries of souls conflicted;
Death of hamsters, flushed goldfishes
Mixed in with the holiday wishes -
These letters, yearly rights of pen,
Are Facebook for the older gen.
How do they choose what they expose -
The births and dogs and college choices,
Sports awards, cherubic voices;
Kids are perfect, health is great,
One has found the ideal mate;
They’ve travel to some scenic dell
Or sometimes had the trip from hell;
New grandparents who boast out loud
That reproduction makes them proud;
It’s not all joy, sometimes there’s doubting,
True confessions, subtle outing;
She’s been hurt and he’s addicted,
Painful cries of souls conflicted;
Death of hamsters, flushed goldfishes
Mixed in with the holiday wishes -
These letters, yearly rights of pen,
Are Facebook for the older gen.
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