Life in college at 40

"There is a lot of technology in there." So what?

2007-11-08T16:43:00.000-08:00

So what? What about customers? Is there a lot of customers out there who need this?

I am so tired of the mobile industry congratulating itself during endless conferences without any sense of marketing, or at least market history.

Honestly, how many people do you know that have already used Instant Messaging from their cell phone?
Have you?

I almost giggled when I heard this manager from this huge phone company saying "12,000 R&D engineers were working hard to shorten their product development cycle from concept to deployment". Good for you. Question: to do what, for who, when, and for how much?

And I am not talking about us, geeks from the Silicon Valley, I am talking about the global consumer market, you know, the US... Don't get me wrong, I am an engineer by training, too, and I love all that glitters and beeps.
But there are people around us that are not like you and I, people who do not even read blogs about cell phones.

Fact: it took 15 years for the cell phone to start taking off as a commonly found gadget, 20 years total to become the most important object of your life - at least if you're less than 25.

Vodafone Europe spent millions for the marketing of mobile video conferencing in 2003. Where are we today? It's interestingly hard to find public data about the actual number of users. Do you see many people mobile conferencing when you're in London? In Tokyo maybe?
Well, London people are not Tokyo people.

I was in Europe working for a client, a telecom giant, during their loud launch of MMS (a photo you send from cell phone to cell phone). I asked a marketing manager two years later how the MMS business was doing. She lowered head and shoulders sadly and just said "not as expected."

Then I asked my niece, a modern geek of 16 able to configure any cell phone in Chinese language in less than 30 seconds :
- do you use MMS?
- no, it's too expensive.
- how much is it?
- I don't know, but it must be expensive.
- if you find me the price of an MMS, I'll give you 10 times its value in cash.
Thinking she just won at least 20 euros of easy money, two minutes later my niece was reading the brochure of her cell phone, that she had never opened before.
The price of an MMS was twice the price of an SMS, 20 cents. I remember her disappointed look at the sight of my 2-euro coin for her...

I was so mean, it was the best and the cheapest market study I have ever done. With great conclusions.

Rule #1: It's not because your cell phone can do cool stuff for cheap that you will do stuff with it.

Rule #2: it takes one generation for a new technology to be adopted.

So ok, tomorrow, I hear we will have a cell phone that can do even more stuff.

Okay okay, I hear you... BTW, where are the restrooms?

Google Mobile versus Microsoft Mobile : what about Adobe, Mr Chairman ?

2007-11-06T18:28:00.000-08:00

The beauty of being a student in journalism in the Silicon Valley is that you can meet and talk to many icons of the high-tech world. Here is one, with a giant footprint left for ever in the sand, the brilliant and approachable John Warnock, and a paper I wrote after Warnock's conference at the Xerox PARC last Thursday about the past, present and future of media.

What if your name was given to a new typeface ? John Warnock, inventor of Postcript, Adobe’s co-founder and now chairman, has received this original mark of distinction. « I was flattered, » he said modestly. « I am using it, it’s a beautiful one, I know the designer, he words for Adobe, he did a good job. »

Adobe’s Postcript technology was the base of the first publishing revolution in the computer world in the 80s.

And yes, Adobe does intend to be part of the next one, the mobile content revolution.

While Google’s entry in the telecom and social world regularly generates an over-PRed stream of news, Warnock is not necessarily impressed : watch Microsoft, he said. « Microsoft has always been a strong second.»

What about Adobe ? You can already view Pdf and Flash-Lite documents on a cell phone, so must be going somewhere ?

« Adobe has a strong play, » Warnock said, smiling, noting at the diversity and the volume of the platforms where Adobe formats are present.

Indeed, Flash and Pdf represent a de-facto force of compatibility for anyone whose ambition aims at bridging the gap between computers and phones. 99.3% of desktop computers play Flash, according to Adobe.

In that perspective, Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia in 2005 represents the most strategic acquisition of the group and the most influential step towards the « rich internet-mobile content.»

Contrarily to other highly mediatized acquisitions with doubtful so-called long-term synergies, Flash graft on Adobe may quietly grow into fruits sweeter and earlier in the mobile content season than most expect. No wonder Warnock has a big smile when talking about Flash.

How else could it be, when interactivity and animation is the key word to entertain a generation that cites the cell phone as the most important object of their life?

Today less than 20% of the traditional US broadcast media audience is below 35.

Warnock is aware of the change in democgraphics and the « denial » of the newspapers and film producers. « I kept on telling them, you are in the news business, but they believed they were in the news paper business. »

« The only two problems not solved by the internet are branding and awareness, » Warnock said. You still need a piece of paper or a billboard that redirects to the web site. « Adobe does not make any printed advertising anymore, or only for brand awareness,» like flyers in colleges – as well as dramatically discounted Adobe software available for the future designers.

Even the newspapers who embraced quickly enough to the internet with their own web site did not understand how to approach the new generation. The newspapers named their web site after the news print, without any appeal to the youngters, Warnock said. Warnock also advises the company Salon Media Group (Salon.com), a 10-year-old pioneer in online journalism.

« I don’t know about the future of TV, but it cannot be good, » Warnock said. The same denial can be heard from film producers, although the theater audience declined down to 27 million people a week or 9.7% of the population.

The advertising model of the traditional media is simply out-of-date, Warnock said. When Google’s free analytic tools gives you real-time analysis on which blogger refered which web site, « the newspapers are still doing surveys to konw how many people picked up the newpaper that day.»

« The cost of delivery matters, » Warnock said. Traditional media cannot compete with high costs of publishing and distribution, compared to almost zero cost on the internet.

Media propaganda, media life

2007-11-06T13:03:00.000-08:00

This class about media is about to be the best in town for its intellectual brainstorming - at personal level, since there is no debate in class. The topics are propaganda and stereotypes in media.

I copy below my mid-term paper, it's too long for a blog, I know, but what the heck, it's Google who pays for the storage on this server after all...

I encourage everybody to do the same introspection on how media affects our life with this simple exercise :
- divide your past life in three;
- pick one major media event for every third;
- describe how it has influenced your life and perspectives.

A media life: individual media consequences over time.

I – Dream TV

The first media image I’ve got buried in the deepest layer of my memory is a cracking black and white TV screen displaying two white stuffed animals with globes instead of heads, jumping funny and slowly on grayish dust under a black sky.

Admittedly, I was most preoccupied with getting milk from my mother’s breast at that age of my life. However I know my parents spent a fair amount of passionate time in front of TV in the space-blessed month of July 1969.

This image, through repetition and association to the enthusiasm of my parents, propelled my desire for a career of astronaut – or cosmonaut, since even the moon has to wear flags. I studied engineering, with the claimed ambition to be part of the first colony on Mars – the NASA said it would be ready by 2010.

When you are a young kid, you are dependent from what serious people from serious agencies say on TV about the planned future of humanity, especially when your parents share the belief, too. I prepared for 2010.

II - Lying TV

I learnt in the second third of my life, in University, that others did not fall for these space dreams. « What proof do you have that men ever walked on the moon? », a Russian girl asked me, scandalized at my naivety about media news.

I realized she had not been submitted to the same set of messages as I did, but to the opposite one, the one that glorified a female dog and a sphere of metal in the sky, and at the same who doubted of a stripped shoeprint in the dust.

O great old days for media, when a ying message was immediately created in opposition to any yang message, and vice-versa, offering to our minds the only undeniable truth, that there is no truth in media but only political statements.

My country standing politically and geographically at the intersection of both propagandas’ radar coverages, and self-developing a glorious military-based legend of independence through systematic references in education, TV and movies (“the US never helped us, we helped ourselves”), my generation learnt rapidly to be mediatically[1] schizophrenic and selfishly partisan.

Communists say this, capitalists say that. Intellectuals disagree. Now debate. Then make up your mind, proclaim loudly where you stand, strike and shout in the streets if necessary. Manufacturing discontent, would say Chomsky.

No wonder that the New York Times dismiss European newspapers for their incapacity of giving a piece of news without an opinion. Our entire education is based on giving our opinion.

And yet, if the media do not give their opinion and bluntly copy the news provided by governments and companies, what’s left to the very basic right to know?

1991: the French government said they did not know about AIDS tests for blood samples in time, and declined responsibility for the hundreds of deaths by poisoned transfusion.

An independent newspaper published an internal report to the Prime Minister where the tests were described as saving life, but expensive. The decision was to ignore them. Ignore AIDS, for two deadly bursting years, 1985 and 1986.

Cry, strikes and outcry, the Prime Minister fell but a jury found him not guilty. The president escaped trial, thanks to rapid moves on TV to other topics.

The newspaper will be modified to a “cultural” newspaper, then will completely disappear in 1999, victim of media industry merges and consolidation.

Even the entry on Wikipedia does not give the exact number of deaths by transfusion.

Last year, the French President ate chicken in front of the cameras to demonstrate there was no meat disease to be afraid of. The following week the sales of meat in France dropped even more sharply. There are things my generation cannot forget.

III – No TV

End of the 90s, it became obvious that the ones who will go to Mars will be the ones able to pay for their tickets at the NASA booking office, not the engineers who build the space shuttles. A career change became necessary, a new life.

I went to visit New York City in 2000, as soon as I had my name on a piece of recycled whitish paper with eagles in the background, stating I had access to a new land of opportunities with the right to pursue a new path to happiness. To me like for all immigrants, the piece of paper was made of diamonds. Soon, blood diamonds.

Delightedly head up towards the top of the two most magnificent symbols of the combined power of art, technology and finance, the sky was the limit. There was no wall anymore, in Berlin or anywhere. The world could relax and enjoy peacefully the fruits of hard work and improved science. Enhanced education, quality of life and human rights will spread all over the world, at the same forever-growing rate as the Nasdaq’s stock options.

What went wrong?

We forgot that while the two powerful propagandas were fighting each other, they were covering all other voices. Convenient despotisms were setup as battlefields by proxy, and maintained at arms-length by one or the other power, in Albania, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan or Iraq. When the wall fell in Berlin, there was no more money and no more weapons left for dictators. An uneducated population, left ignorant of politics and basics citizenship rights first by colonialists then by cold warriors, was suddenly abandoned to the simplest and most accessible channel of propaganda, the religion leaders.

Europe had been through so many religious wars for centuries we cannot dismiss the phenomenon. The problem is, it’s only this year that I found such an analysis in a US newspaper, regarding the Middle-East detonating mix of politics and religion.

For weeks, months, years after what should have been a historical wake-up call and was just brainless screens, the US media have constantly repeated the same traumatizing videos, over and over again, without explanation, without analysis, without any “Why” or “What went wrong”, or any real debate about “What were the causes and what could we do about them”. Apart from the John-Wayne / Rambo gunshot approach. The most amazing example of media-initiated psychological traumatism through cultivation for an entire population, exactly as described by Chomsky.

I sold my TV one week after the media deflagration. It was the largest flat screen you could dream of, a beautiful shiny silver Sony sample of the brightest technology money can buy. Vomiting crappy and violent propaganda for one week. I detached myself from TV, for ever.

It’s now 6 years I have no TV. Of course I lack of information regarding Britney and Oprah – but believe it or not, I survive. In fact, I lack of conversation about meaningless topics with uninteresting people, a quite useful news-filter in an information-crowded world. What’s best, I am free of the forced display of violence and fear and sex that is the common lot of US TV.

Violence and sex in media have dramatically increased, I do not remember the same images from my childhood. As a result, I watched more violence and nudity that day in class where we watched a documentary on music videos than in my entire TV life.

If, as a grown-up Western woman, I was shocked by these videos, there is little doubt any traditional culture will defy the US model as satanic – using that same word, to make the enemy a beast. The other students seemed to be so unmoved by such display that it was for me a second wave of shock. My children will watch no TV.

I get the news from the internet, via analysts, columnists, all opinion-based, right and left and middle sides, in an attempt to extract some substance of truth. I have heard it’s interesting to listen to the Russian official TV, too. Just in case they say they walked on the moon again.

Our chance? Increasingly, from every country in the world, blogs expand points of views and embrace a new form of reflection, discussion, and citizen journalism.

Blogs are what provide us with ying and yang in our media life. In my opinion.

Debating : a speech competition

2007-10-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

In the same line of thoughts, I went to a Speech class about debate.

Fine, I said to myself, a class where you can speak up and discuss today's topics with your classmates.

I was so wrong. Right on the first day, the teacher explained that debate was great because then you can apply to debate competition. No kidding. Learn how to debate to get a prize? What?

What about learning to debate to be a good and mindful citizen, exercising the right to vote in an intelligent and informed way?

I dropped the class that same day, I could not stand it. No wonder you cannot talk about politics in social networks. You can only talk about movies, and even then, don't say to bluntly if you liked the movie, just tell what the story is about.

Let me tell you a secret : without debate you cannot know the people you talk to. And the dinner is boring.

I don't care for your opinion!

2007-10-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

Amazing comment from a teacher, about what he expected in the mid-term exam paper...

So here is my opinion!

I was born and raised in a country where you learn how to affirm and to explain your opinion, where exam subjects look like:
<<"PR=PRopaganda" Do you agree? Explain and comment. You have one hour.>>

If you don't state whether you agree or not at least in the conclusion of your paper, you'd get only half of the mark.

So you learn how to criticize, and to speak up, and to never take a statement for granted. Any piece of news is the start of a discussion, that may turn heated and loud - so what? Isn't that what democracy and free speech is about?

Here in this American college, this is not how it works, despite the First Amendment. If you say what you think, you're in trouble, obviously. So you just read the news, repeat a few facts that seems interesting, most of the times about Britney, and that's it. You stop there.

Do not think, do not judge, do not analyze, just repeat what the TV says.

At another time, I had the same teacher, following another path, trying to extract some dynamics from the class. "And what do you think of this?" he asked.
Too late, the student froze in surprise, got out a "I don't know" then stayed painfully silent, eyes on the floor, until the teacher dropped and moved on.

Teaching you to stay silent. Is that the goal of the US education, after all?

Truth as the first media casualty

2007-10-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

Sweet terrifying moments, when you explore the depths of your ignorance - and the ignorance of others...

On the theme "media are means of propaganda but do not inform us," the teacher asked us a series of questions to test our knowledge of Iran, today's "enemy", according to TV.

The question on the capital city is easy, anybody watching CNN more than 15 minutes knows that. But at the question, "which race the Iranians claim they are from?", I start sweating... I have no idea! Caucasian seems too banal, although Iran is close from the mountains named Caucase?

In despair I glance to the copy of my neighbor - it's not an exam, just a friendly test to teach us our ignorance.
I freeze at her answer in horror. She wrote that the race of the Iranians is.... Muslim!

Sweetheart, don't you know Muslim is a religion? And by assimilation, if you think "the enemy" is the entire muslim world, then you're in for a life of terror, indeed, because your enemy stretches from Asia to Africa and, honestly, to your neighbors. It's a bit like saying all Christians are white, and vice-versa. Maybe that's how you think about Christians after all? That "we" are "good" and "they" are "evil", to quote your president?

How bad is a lack of information, and yes, a lack of basic education, that assimilate to a single country more than 1,300 years of world history and the second largest religion in the world?

If I can imitate the author of this page about Muslims:

In mass media propaganda, "as in war, truth is often the first casualty."

It's easy and comfy!

2007-10-21T14:06:00.000-07:00

The thing I was worried about at first, is that I have a lot more gray hair and wrinkles that my classmates, but they are all always so nice not one has made any comments about it. Who said the youngsters do not know how to behave?

A few steps I recommend for a successful immersion deep into the college bathtub:

- I colored my hair in blond, it saves me 10 years. Yeah !

- I swapped my top drawer with black pants and black jackets to the lowest level, to replace it with the drawer with jeans, sweaters and flip-flap. And it feels so good!

- I put my profile on Facebook and MySpace, and now I've got my own blog, wow !

- I chose a college right in the heart of the Silicon Valley, where people think of changing careers like changing wardrobe - a healthy renewal that you've got to do every few years, preferably when the Nasdaq is coming at its peak.
That way, I am not the only old crow in class.

That was not so difficult after all!

40 and student !

2007-10-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

Finally I've got to do what I like to do. It was about time. And what I like to do is learn learn learn.

So tired of corporate life. Like many women I was so naively head down into my daily job and daily duties that when I reached the glass ceiling at full speed, I hurt my head really badly. Ouch, what a brutal wake-up!

When the glorious time of my liberation arrived in the form of a thick check, I did not know where my career was going, but I knew where it was not going: back. What's next?

Back to college. Picking and exploring dream subjects I neglected when I was a young unsecured chick listening to my parents and striving to become an engineer, so I can get a happy and wealthy job for life. Yeah right. Delocalisation, merge and acquisition and other corporate ego-politics did not hit the headlines at that time, o happy days!

So now I am bathing in a delight of creativity: creative writing, creative photography, theater, advertising, journalism... you get the picture. Creative creative creative. Anything away from a computer !

How does it work when you're 40 and surrounded by MySpace generation? Well that may be the most interesting part of my learning...