Wherein the author waxes eloquently, or at least waxes, on telecom, technology, and consumer marketing with incidental asides about such truly important issues as cars, Dartmouth and Secretariat.
Anyone wondering if remarkable people still rise to the top in Washington, D.C. should take a moment and read the email below. Sheila Tate, former press secretary to Nancy Reagan and spokesman for the 1988 George Bush Presidential campaign, is retiring after a remarkable career proving that Alan Alda was half-right when he said, “It’s better to be wise than smart.” In Sheila’s case, she was both.
Nearly 20 years ago, the Washington intelligensia was rocked with the news that Sheila and former White House press secretary Jody Powell had created an eponymous firm, Powell Tate. It was the summer of 1991 and the firm quickly established itself as “the” place for corporations in need of crisis help.
Sheila brought me into Powell Tate about six weeks after the company started which only goes to show that her judgment even in those glory years was remarkably fallible. I had had the privilege of working with her on the 1988 Bush campaign, where she was chief spokesman though it should be noted that I did not write a certain line about the California raisins.
Everyone who ever worked with Sheila has favorite anecdotes and this writer is no exception:
At a surprise birthday party for Sheila in 1991, a senior Powell Tate consultant gently ribbed her during a toast about a client problem that happened when the two worked at a different PR shop. When the toast was over, Sheila smilingly replied, “Michelle, we always hated you back then.”
After the first President Bush had an unfortunate stomach incident during a state visit to Japan, Sheila went on CNN and was asked if this represented a “burp” on the Bush Presidency. Not missing a beat, she replied that “I think it’s more of a ‘yurp’ than a ‘burp.’”
My favorite: a photo taken shortly after the rather bitter 1988 Presidential election showing Sheila standing between George H.W. Bush and Mike Dukakis. As I recall, the incoming Prez wrote underneath it, “To Sheila, Only you could referee this one.”
Sheila, if you’re reading this, there are two things you should know. First, you and Jody were a remarkable influence on me that I will never forget. Second, I was underpaid.
As I sit at my computer on a very cold Christmas Eve day, I can’t help think about the fact that when Jody and I started Powell Tate in 1991 we didn’t have computers. Nor did we have cell phones or blackberries; social media would have sounded like a disease. Hmm. Maybe not a bad definition.
Powell Tate started with about 10 employees and far fewer clients. We were in very cramped quarters in the Metropolitan Square Building. The great part was we got to design our new space at 700 Thirteenth Street from scratch. And now, a mere 20 years later, you’re leaving it!
Back in the “early days”, I was an early bird, usually at work about 7:30am. Jody showed up about 10am. I left by 6pm and he worked into the evening hours which was great for West Coast clients and a few European clients as well. We grew rapidly and we all worked as hard as we needed to, even overnight on occasion, and created great memories while doing great work for our clients.
On January 1st I will be erased from the IPG systems and my new address will be: ______. The company has allowed me to slide slowly into retirement and I now embrace it with enthusiasm! Before that happens, I need to wish each of you a wonderful Powell Tate experience, a long and rewarding career and great memories. Don’t lose the essence of our culture where the individual and hard work is valued and the team is valued more; and above all, stay loyal to your clients and give them your very best. I hope each of you can look back when you are about to retire and know you did your best, you loved your work and you truly admire your colleagues. And, if you want me to be really happy, vote Republican.
Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Trachtenberg’s article this week on e-book pricing is a depressing reminder that Karl Marx was right: History does repeat itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. Trachtenberg’s focus is on the inflated pricing structure creeping into e-book pricing but if you change the topic from books to music, his article could probably have appeared in 1998.
To put this in perspective, here’s a thought worth at least passing consideration: How did the music industry, with all its entrenched legal and financial heft among the major labels during the 1980s and 1990s, manage to be dominated by a computer company? Call it arrogance in the sense that the guiding philosophy for too long involved a refusal to give consumers what they were clamoring for. Meanwhile, the only pro-active strategy seemed to be launching lawsuits against tweens and grannies.
Remember Liquid Audio? No? OK, here goes: It started in the mid-1990s as a music download service and had the potential to succeed, driving home broadband adoption in the process. Reportedly Steve Jobs nosed around the company early on, considering purchasing it as a way to jumpstart Apple’s nascent moves into the music industry.
But Liquid Audio never caught on because (gee, this is shocking) it could never secure sufficient licensing agreements with the music labels. Meanwhile, even as two-hour movies on DVD were selling everywhere for $14, the music industry kept insisting that this same price was reasonable for a 45-minute audio disc with perhaps eight songs – in other words, the same product as Elvis Presley’s 1956 Christmas Album albeit in a more technologically sophisticated format.
Back to e-Books. With the music industry’s pricing arrogance serving as a case study in how to anger consumers, the publishing conglomerate has a serious need for entry level marketing help. This story has been told before and the ending is inevitable:
Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The great Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro has this wonderful oped in today’s New York Times. Writing about the latest conspiracy du jour involving authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, Shapiro delightfully picks apart the thesis that Edward de Vere was the Bard’s ghostwriter:
“[P]romoters of de Vere’s cause have a lot of evidence to explain away, including testimony of contemporary writers, court records and much else that confirms that Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him. Meanwhile, not a shred of documentary evidence has ever been found that connects de Vere to any of [Shakespeare's] plays or poems…. Perhaps the greatest obstacle facing de Vere’s supporters is that he died in 1604, before 10 or so of Shakespeare’s plays were written.”
Shapiro is one of the nation’s leading Shakespearean scholars and this author was lucky enough to participate in a semester-long seminar with him in the 1980s. At that time, the ripe theory was that Christopher Marlowe was Shakespeare’s true author, a concept Shapiro effectively derided at length. Marlowe was no doubt a wonderful writer but this theory seems to have withered in recent years, only to be replaced by the de Vere conspiracy.
If only this conspiracy could be put to rest as easily as, say, a birth certificate controversy. Or as Paulina pleaded in The Winter’s Tale, “What’s gone and what’s past help, should be past grief.”
During the coming days, there will be testimonials to Steve Jobs that border on hagiography. (Erica Ogg at GigaOm is already out with a good one.) He might not have changed “the world” but he certainly did change large parts of it. More than anyone else, Jobs convinced the music industry to stop the circular firing squad mentality that resulted in the perverse concept of engaging the next generation of buyers by suing or threatening to sue them.
But twenty years earlier, he also foresaw the role of the graphic interface in personal computing while most of the industry was fixated on hardware. Think back to 1980: IBM not only rebuffed Bill Gates’ proposal to sell the concept behind Windows’ forerunner, it told Gates that its OS/1 would push Microsoft out of business. That was the climate into which Jobs pushed Apple barely a few years later.
This author remembers it well. In 1984, I purchased my first computer. It was a 128 kb Mac preloaded with basic software (anyone remember MacWrite?) that Dartmouth made available for about $1,000. The word processing was definitely preferable to typing on a Smith-Corona but had its limitations. The maximum size of a text document was about 6-7 pages which meant that my senior thesis on Jean-Paul Sartre and European totalitarianism actually comprised three separate documents.
Apple would founder without Jobs. It suffered terribly under Gil Amelio, whose lack of foresight can be summed up by his brusque dismissal of the Internet in his biography, On the Firing Line.
Finally, it’s worth noting that in addition to the iPod, iPhone, Mac and everything else, Jobs had a hand in the greatest commercial in TV history. According to Apple lore, the Board was appalled when Jobs previewed the commercial in late 1983 but Jobs persisted. Nearly 30 years later, no other commercial has come close.
Why would Steve Jobs be interested in Hulu? The answer may be in Tarheel Country, specifically Maiden, near I-77.
That’s where you’ll find Apple’s mammoth new data center, built to handle iCloud and a lot more. How much more? Look at some numbers: This center is either 500,000 square feet (AppleInsider) or a million (Robert Cringely). By comparison, according to Cringely, IBM’s Special Events Web Service, which handled data for the Olympics, has three data centers with a combined 2000 square feet.
Any way you calculate it, iCloud by itself will not generate the data needed to give Apple anything approaching a suitable return on capital. But wait! Isn’t Apple trying to fast track the consumer transition to the cloud by phasing out (or minimizing) internal hard drives? The new Mac Mini, introduced this week, has no optical drive and neither does the Mac Air, which replaces Apple’s aging MacBook. Meanwhile, you’ve never been able to play a blu-ray disc on your Mac.
But that’s still not nearly enough data to pay for the Maiden center, especially given Moore’s Law (“the number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years”).
Let’s go one step further and factor in compression. Even aging microchips in the Apple line have an H.264 encoder/decoder that apparently can compress a 1080p audio/video stream into four megabits per second. That compares with about 20 megabits in normal circumstances or perhaps 24 for better HDTV.
Here’s the short answer on Hulu: Apple has pumped a huge amount of money into North Carolina but its returns, even if iCloud takes off, will be paltry-to-negative. Even if you forget the money (Apple is sitting on $76 billion, after all), the black eye for the company would be a huge embarrassment.
So Steve and his colleagues need to do something fast. Buy Hulu and integrate it into iTunes. It’s not a great solution but as Richard Dreyfus demanded from Roy Scheider in Jaws, “You got any better ideas, hot shot?”
Apologies for the long drought in blog updates. Aaron Burr once said, “Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done” which may explain why Alexander Hamilton took the first shot in their duel. But it’s not great advice for blogging.
Two events in the computing world this past week show that Serenditpity is more than just a well-known Manhattan eatery. IBM commemorated its 100th anniversary and Google issued its first foray into consumer hardware since last year’s Nexus One disaster.
First up, IBM. Thirty years ago, Bill Gates offered to sell IBM the rights to the precursor to the Windows OS for about $100,000. IBM refused, not comprehending the idea of profits in software outside its OS/1. The driving principles in IT for the next generation offered a cruel lesson. By the late 1980s, minicomputers had pushed aside mainframes since VAXes were about a third the cost of an IBM 3090 and smaller too. By the mid-1990s, PC’s had eclipsed minicomputers since they were about a third the cost of a VAX.
IBM’s saving grace was bringing in Dartmouth grad Lou Gerstner in 1993, whose approach to business (and himself) was so amoral that he had served on the board of a well-known cancer advocacy group only to resign to become head of RJR Nabisco. But Gerstner understood computing’s changing dynamics, quickly reversing John Akers’ disastrous idea of quasi-autonomous divisions pursuing conflicting goals. Instead, Gerstner killed OS/2 and turned the company’s focus to high-margin client services. (By 2004, his successor spun off the PC business to Lenovo.)
“essentially full-screen Web browsers designed to do everything via the Internet. Instead of using traditional programs, you will rely on ‘Web apps’ accessed through the browser—email programs, word processors or photo editors, for example.”
Among the benefits, notes Mossberg:
Because all your apps, settings and files are stored in the cloud, if you lose your Chromebook, or wish to use someone else’s Chromebook, you can just log into your Google account and all your stuff will appear on the new machine.
Google automatically updates the operating system, so you don’t have to deal with manual updates.
Look at the numbers driving this and the logical outcome. Unlike certain industry observers, numbers don’t lie. Depending on a company’s infrastructure (OK, a big “if”), cloud-based computing costs are at least a third cheaper than the cost of a PC, once you include the time and cost of customizing software, keeping it current, and adding security.
If the mainframe-to-VAX-to-PC experience holds, within another five years, the savings will approach 80 percent. So if you’re in college now with your heart set on joining an IT department, your odds are about as good as beating the house at Caesar’s.
By that time, server farms such as what Apple is about to bring online in North Carolina to power iCloud will have proliferated globally, as will fast, low-cost M2M wireless connections. At that point, your data is going into the cloud, backed by 256-bit encryption which isn’t perfect but is still far preferable to today’s system.
The Chromebook will not be a commercial success because consumer habits, especially in technology, are not conditioned for changes this radical, unless the company peddling it is based in Cupertino. But cracks are in the Titanic’s hull and water is seeping in. In another five to six years, Microsoft’s Office and Windows will evoke memories of Ozymandias, which is too bad insofar as Windows 7 is actually a worthy competitor to Snow Leopard. But it is too little, too late.
The secrets to writing a great speech aren’t exactly on par with the Nazca Lines: Research your audience, recognize what they want to hear, and use a little humor. Aristotle might quibble with that but he didn’t have to contend with YouTube. More importantly, speakers need to navigate the inevitable Scylla and Charybdis involved when speaking about one’s own accomplishments: Don’t try to separate yourself from the audience by creating an unrealistic image of your experiences, yet do not debase your accomplishments in pursuit of a false image of yourself. (Mitt Romney, call your office.)
All of this makes the commencement speech that Conan O’Brien delivered at Dartmouth College last weekend so remarkable. His humor was biting and obviously written specifically for the occasion. The self-deprecation was genuine yet not so frequent as to be eye-rolling. Most importantly, he eschewed the most overused message in college graduations (“Reach for your dreams”) in order to explain something truly valuable and useful: how to come back from failure.
My former boss, the late Amb. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, spent her career as a professor at Georgetown University and was no stranger to the college graduation circuit. She once told me that the most common response she heard from her former students about their graduation was, “I remember everything that happened except what the graduation speaker said.”
For those who just want humor, the speech’s first 15 minutes will suffice. But for everyone else, the most worthwhile comment occurs at 20:53:
It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique…. If you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived misfortune can become a catalyst for profound reinvention.
Most commencement speeches are a combined sea of blather. Conan’s speech last weekend was a refreshing reminder that the most unlikely of speakers often produce the greatest memories – even if they’re speaking from behind a tree trunk.
Nearly 27 years ago, the great columnist David Broder wrote the inscription on the left for a college student with the temerity to ask for an audience with America’s most influential political columnist. Though it was a presidential election year, Mr. Broder welcomed the student to his crowded office at The Washington Post. For the next 30 minutes, he proceeded to critique in gentle but scholarly terms that student’s political science thesis.
A few years later, after graduation, this student was a speechwriter at the White House for then-Vice President Bush. Occasionally he would see Mr. Broder, usually on West Executive Avenue, which separates The White House and the Old Executive Office Building. Brief conversations were typically of the “what have you been hearing” variety and always enlightening.
In a town where egotism is considered an honored and highly competitive aspiration, Mr. Broder was always gracious and quietly impressive.
Almost overnight [in the 16th century, when audiences in Britain began having to pay to watch plays], a wave of brilliant dramatists emerged, including Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. These talents and many comparable and lesser lights had found the opportunity, the conditions and the money to pursue their craft. The stark findings of this experiment? As with much else, literary talent often remains undeveloped unless markets reward it.
Shapiro co-authored the oped with Scott Turow and Paul Aiken from the Authors Guild. The three go on to argue for better legal protection of copyrighted work, especially online. The gravamen of their focus is legitimate, though their casual dismissal of the counterproductive role played by a backward-looking music industry during the past decade is unfortunate. (For more about the music industry’s errors, click here and here.)
Still, as Shapiro showed in Contested Will, few people are his peer on matters of the Bard. What fates impose, that men must needs abide; It boots not to resist both wind and tide.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) founder and longtime CEO Ken Olsen died this week at 84. By all accounts, Olsen was a decent man but his passing is a timely reminder of the problems of lineal thinking with technology.
Olsen missed the PC revolution because he didn’t see oncoming OS improvements that would make the computer a consumer product. He wasn’t alone. Around 1980, IBM rejected a young Bill Gates’ offer to sell the forerunner of the Windows OS for about $100,000. As decisions go, that’s akin to General Pickett telling his troops to take Cemetery Hill.
Olsen lasted as DEC’s CEO for another 15 years after making the above comment in 1977. But by that time, the company was well into its death roll.
Fast forward to today: The PC era is ending and the OS as we’ve known it for a generation won’t matter because what made it important to us is quickly migrating to racks in a dark data center. Devices are increasingly coming preloaded with the OS on a chip, while apps and data are stored in the cloud.
Meanwhile, our computer gizmos are falling into two groups: mobile devices, including ultralight laptops, and large displays with integrated receivers for entertainment.
DEC’s mainframes lost to minicomputers 20+ years ago because the latter were less than half the cost. (As an added bonus, they didn’t need a special room cooled to the temperature of Detroit in February.) By the early 1990s, minicomputers had lost out to PCs because the computing cost of latter was less than half that of a VAX. Now, look forward to what the cloud means: Companies can slash their IT staff because they won’t need to spend the money when employees have stripped down smart terminals, an small encrypted hard drive and an Ethernet connection.
Anyone wondering if remarkable people still rise to the top in Washington, D.C. should take a moment and read the email below. Sheila Tate, former press secretary to Nancy Reagan and spokesman for the 1988 George Bush Presidential campaign, is retiring after a remarkable career proving that Alan Alda was half-right when he said, “It’s better to be wise than smart.” In Sheila’s case, she was both.
Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Trachtenberg’s 
The great Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro has 
During the coming days, there will be testimonials to Steve Jobs that border on hagiography. (Erica Ogg at GigaOm is already out with 
Nearly 27 years ago, the great columnist David Broder wrote the inscription on the left for a college student with the temerity to ask for an audience with America’s most influential political columnist. Though it was a presidential election year, Mr. Broder welcomed the student to his crowded office at The Washington Post. For the next 30 minutes, he proceeded to critique in gentle but scholarly terms that student’s political science thesis.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) founder and longtime CEO