Letter from the Vineyard

November 3rd, 2012

First of all, I’m safe. Thank you to all the people who have reached out to me. On the Friday before Sandy I retreated to the cottage. The eastern edge of the storm kept moving west; there was rain and wind but I was shielded from the brunt of the storm.

Wednesday, trains still not running, I carpooled down into the city with some friends. It’s here reality struck. The news upstate tended to the local side highlighting the relief the region had done as well as it had – no repeat of Hurricane Irene. But in the city wide swaths were affected. The lower third of Manhattan was without power and subways, elderly and disabled isolated in their apartments while teams went through and checked each apartment, finding them to offer assistance and evacuation.

Staten Island, the “forgotten” borough, suffered extraordinary damage and clamored for help when all the attention seemed to be going to New Jersey and Queens, where the Breezy Point section suffered over a hundred homes burned to the ground while others were washed away. One of the security guards in our building has taken in his neighbors; a boat went through their living room.

Vast sections of New Jersey are without power; friends and colleagues have had to leave home to find warmth and comfort with friends and relatives. Gas rationing was implemented in New Jersey today. There isn’t enough fuel to go around. Cars are being pushed into stations and gas tanks siphoned down to power generators.

The images of Staten Island and the Jersey Shore evoke memories of Katrina. They are devastating. Seeing the ruins of Breezy Point it would be good to note that at the height of the storm, men and women of NYFD rushed in to save what they could. Today I heard a paean on the radio for the brave men and women of the NYPD and the NYFD and their counterparts in New Jersey. Amen. They regularly risk their lives and did so during this storm.

The remarkable spirit of New Yorkers is also much in evidence. For the most part even those who had lost the most maintained their composure and spirit. Neighbor helped neighbor. Our IT leader had her apartment under water and blessed her neighbors for all they were doing. Scenes like that were repeated in New York and New Jersey. In crime-ridden Newark, there were no crimes of “opportunity.”

A woman on Staten Island had her two children, two and four, washed away from her; later found dead in a field. Streets in Staten Island and in Breezy Point evoked pictures of London during the Blitz. Thankfully the death count is below a hundred and not in the hundreds.

My friend Robert Murray, a structural engineer, marveled at how well the older buildings held up. Built to withstand wind bursts of 85 miles per hour they held up to wind bursts in the 90’s. One friend lives on the top floor of a Harlem building and felt it rock and sway as if in an earthquake.

There are two New Yorks, the New York that was affected and the New York that isn’t. On the Upper West Side of Manhattan it is hard to believe that not far away is devastation. Everywhere there are signs asking for help. Riverside Church is a gathering place for supplies to be distributed to Staten Island. Diapers are in demand.

This has been a great crisis. It brings back memories of 9/11. It is being handled with that great generosity of spirit one finds in New Yorkers when push comes to shove. It gives credence to why some call this the greatest city in the world. It makes one realize the vulnerability we have to nature. Climatologists say this is only the beginning, that we need to expect and plan for more storms like this. We’ve had two “hundred year events” in the last two years.

Good to the people of New York for their courage and spirit. Good that we have seen everyday heroes rush in where angels fear to tread. Good that we have survived one more bash to the head. And good if we learn lessons from this.

Letter From New York

September 23, 2012

It’s a Sunday night and as I write this, the 64^th Annual Emmy Awards are on and I’m watching them out of the corner of my eye.  The organization behind the Awards, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is an organization about which I cared a lot, for many years.  Still do but now I live in New York and it’s pretty hard to be engaged with a Los Angeles based organization when you live in New York.

I moved here to New York just as I was finishing my fifth year as a Governor of the Academy.  Four of them were as Governor for Television Executives and the fifth was as Founding Governor for the Interactive Peer Group, the first new Peer Group approved by the Academy in fifteen years.

A group of us had worked for six years to establish the Peer Group, working to see that as new technology emerged the “tent” that was the Academy would not be closed to those who were working in that arena as the Academy had shut out the nascent cable industry a decade before.  Most of us working for this change were from the cable business – people who saw that the business was going to change as the technology evolved.

The same group that worked to create the Peer Group had also helped to stage the Superhighway Summit, a conference that was probably the single most successful event staged by the Academy outside its regular events such as the Emmys or the Hall of Fame.  Every mogul in Hollywood attended.  Some, like Rupert Murdoch, still run their empires, others have faded but they were all there.

So was then Vice President Gore, who was the main draw for all the glitterati.  Somewhere there is a picture of us shaking hands.  Later on, I was part of the team that produced the Emmys on the web for the first time.  That was a hoot and I don’t know where all the team has gone though Omar Ahmad, who helped pull it all together has passed on, gone much too soon.  He ended up as Mayor of San Carlos, CA.

Then I moved to New York and it was hard to be involved.  But I still care and watch the events as best I can through the eyes of my friends who are.  Tip of the hat to Sheila Manning and the wonderful Nancy Wiard, who keep me informed as they remain my closest ties, two bulwarks of the Academy who have been actively engaged for years.

Watching the Emmys, I am rejoicing in my history with the organization and saddened that I can’t be as engaged as I once was.  And as I watch the Awards I am aware that the industry is changing rapidly.  Once a pariah, cable is now an established part of the television industry.  Winning a lot of awards…

Riding down on the train from upstate tonight I was riding with Patrick, who was on his way to shoot an episode of 666 Park Avenue, a new show on ABC [unfortunately the buzz is not good but who knows?] and then will be on his way to Baltimore to shoot two weeks on House of Cards, a series being produced for Netflix where all episodes will be released at the same time allowing for an orgy of viewing if it is as compelling as some rumors have it.

“Television” is changing.  First it was cable that threatened traditional “television” and now it is emerging technologies.  House of Cards is a “television” series being produced for an alternative distribution outlet, Netflix, which has as many subs as Comcast, the largest cable system.  It is also resurrecting the brilliant Arrested Development.  Amazon has a streaming service but has not delved into original programming nor has Vudu, the streaming service owned by WalMart but how long will that last?

What is “television” in this new age of OTT [Over The Top] solutions like ROKU and Apple TV?  Of streaming services like Netflix and Vudu and Amazon?   It’s a whole new world out there and I’m playing in it and that’s fun.

Or, as it seems to me…

It has been several weeks since I’ve written a letter; it’s not that thoughts haven’t crossed my mind to write about – there have been lots of those.   There is the ever-evolving political scene that leaves me fascinated as if watching a slow motion train wreck.

On the lines of politics there was a stirring sermon at Trinity Lutheran Church in Manhattan, at a service I attended largely because my friend Lionel was assisting.  [I am part of that ever growing part of the population that defines itself as spiritual but not religious BUT like many of those wish I could find myself in a community of believers with whom I felt comfortable; where I do NOT feel comfortable is within my native Roman Catholic tradition, finding the religion of my birth and upbringing ever more repulsive in its intransigence and lack of charity (my feelings)].

The assistant pastor at Trinity that day made a stirring call for all to be involved and it moved me and reminded me I must be involved, particularly this year.  While I am pleased with neither candidate I am more committed to the Democratic Party and that for which it stands.  I am a Republican who yearns for that party to return to the ideals of yesteryear rather than a party that seems to be looking to the Roman Catholics for inspiration on how to behave.

All these things have caused me to think about writing but none of them stirred me to actually write.  I have been diverted by the amount of tweeting I have been doing, enough to raise my Klout score to 42, respectable if not amazing.  I have also started work on a short story so that might have also diverted me.  There is also I a monthly column I do for one of Odyssey’s members [oh yes, a Catholic organization] on new media directions called @tombers.

But there has been more than diversion going on.  I have felt a quiet settle on me these last few weeks as spring has slipped toward summer.  Today is Memorial Day and I have been mentally paying my respects to the soldiers of former wars but with most of my thoughts on those coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, who have been returning to a dismal job market with the shadows of traumas I can only imagine following them as they work to reintegrate back into civilian life.  I am still embarrassed that no President has asked us as a population in general to sacrifice alongside these men and women – that’s an idea we seem to have given up post World War II.  Guns and butter I think it’s called.  Better that we had a bit of rationing and sacrifice to remind us of the bigger sacrifices being made by others.

As I roll on Amtrak down the Hudson River, the waterway is wide and calm and dotted with pleasure boats out for adventure on a beautiful late spring day on the weekend that is the unofficial beginning of the summer season.  Hudson was filled to the gills this week with returning weekenders; houseguests and a herd of folks come to escape the city without the expense or pretension of the Hamptons.  I loved to see the town hum.

But here I am, writing, happy to be doing so but still unsure what the silence has been that has settled around my soul.  Intimations of mortality?  Certainly I have seen mortality a bit in the sudden death of a friend and illness of another, enough for me to think about the fact that if I ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for me.  As it does for all of us.

I’ll keep writing, when the words come.  I may start another blog based on my media musings.  That column is called @tombers so perhaps that is what I will call the blog.  But right now, this minute, I am on vacation, doing what I want to do rather than what I SHOULD do, a luxury I intend to do my best to pursue the next week as I work my way from Seattle back across the country.

March 26, 2012

Or, as it seems to me…

It is evening at the Cottage, after a restful weekend.  I returned here Friday after two weeks “on the road,” mostly down in Austin, TX for South by Southwest, a huge Interactive, Film and Music Festival.

It started out some twenty-five years ago as a music festival and it has grown and grown until now 125,000 people descend on Austin each year for one part or all of the Festival.  My main focus was the Interactive portion though I lingered on for some of the film part.  It is, without a doubt, the most intellectually interesting conference I have ever attended – this year and last and I am already looking forward to next year.

One of the defining things about the Interactive portion is the hopefulness that underlies it, that the gift of technology is, indeed, a gift and that it will help solve, not create, problems.  In any given hour of any given day, there were at least two or three panels I wanted to attend and since I was not able to clone myself I was constantly making hard choices.  My colleague, Greg Nelson, was there with me, shooting video and producing video stories all by shooting exclusively on an iPad 2.

When we went to register the iPad, the man at the camera desk looked at us as if we were rather mad, shaking his head at was obviously a first for him – but we needed it to be official if we were going to be shooting with it so it proudly was graced with a green camera tag throughout the conference.

I learned that much this year was about “vicinity based software,” apps that told you where your friends were, where you were going to be so they could get there before you or who in the restaurant you were eating in was looking for your particular skill set.  A new browser was launched though I am not sure we really need another browser but it’s www.blekko.com if you’re interested in looking it up.  It claims to be spam free, which is a good thing.

It was a year of catching up; there were no GREAT things that sprouted this year, no huge trends except for “vicinity based” and all that noise was really refinement of what had come before – think Foursquare.  But yet there was that underlying sense of hope and that is one of the things that is so attractive about SXSW [as it is known], that the hope that springs eternal in the human heart is manifested there in the Interactive portion; the music part and the film festival – for the twelve days of SXSW Austin is a town that is infused with hope on all levels and it is good to be there, submerged in hope in a world that often doesn’t feel that way.

So I came home to the Cottage, grateful to be back in my own place of shelter, to catch up with myself, to reconnect with home and hearth.  The days have been grey but good for reflection and I was awash in the bliss of it.  I was having a lazy Sunday afternoon brunch with my friend Larry Divney when I got a call from Nick Stuart, CEO of Odyssey.

On Friday I had been in meetings with Jim Marrinan; he had been working with Odyssey as a consultant for several years and had become a friend during that time.  We were brainstorming how to approach folks for charitable giving.  He was there all day; I spent ninety minutes with him.  He left before I had a chance to say good-bye.

Saturday he arrived at LAX, suffered a heart attack and passed before he could get home.  Since hearing the news I have been overwhelmed by sadness and by the heightened sense of the fragility of life, its quick passing, the suddenness with which things can change.  A Santa Claus like figure, Jim was full of the HO HO HO and never did I hear him say an unkind word – even when he had the right to.  We met Friday morning at the coffee machine, exchanged pleasantries; he told me he had heard good things about some recent projects.  So like Jim, praise before anything.

I will miss him and am glad that life crossed our paths so I did know him; my life was richer for the moments shared.  I will miss him and use his passing to remember we are all but whispers in the wind and should be kind to each other while we can.

Consumer Electronic Show 

Monday evening… January 9^th, 2012

The main hall at the Venetian in Las Vegas has been filling up for the last hour; folks have waited as much as four hours for a seat to hear Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft give the keynote speech tonight.  I am thanking my lucky stars that I have press credentials – I’ve found myself in one of the front rows for a close hand look at what is going to be the last Microsoft appearance at CES – at least for awhile, probably a reasonably long while.

Maybe because of the CES/Microsoft rift everyone seemed a bit forced.  Gary Shapiro, CEO of CES, seemed forced, as did Ballmer, through the whole program.  Back story:  apparently CES wanted to give the Microsoft Keynote slot to someone else next year [think Google] and Microsoft simply said, well, okay, in that case, we’ll take our toys and go home – for good.

Onto the stage bounced the perennial pixie of television, the inestimable Ryan Seacrest, who has a business relationship with Bing, the search engine extraordinaire from Microsoft.  His job was to host the evening and he and Ballmer began extolling the virtues of the Microsoft phone – soon to be on sale in the United States.

My colleague, Greg Nelson, leaned over and reminded me that a couple of days ago there was a brilliant review of the Microsoft phone in the NY Times. And, indeed, there is an elegance to the phone that deserves to be looked at more closely. The phone has a people hub, bringing together all the folks in your life and social networks.  It looks elegant and may well be one of the reasons that the New York Times gave it a good review, though in one moment of the demo it didn’t work on the voice feature.  Oops!

It’s a very visual phone.

Much is being made of the partnership with Nokia, which will eventually use Microsoft to power all their smartphones.  Some of the phones will be available soon.  HTC will be offering a Microsoft smartphone with a 16-megapixel camera. That’s a wow!

I was impressed by what I saw but not by the way it was presented.

Ballmer was loud, brash, an executive turned annoying cheerleader who would have been better served by being more genuine than so forced.  I found myself not wanting the phone just because of the person presenting the phone.

Moving forward, they began talking about Windows.  Currently Windows 7 is powering some elegant thin notebooks, many were highlighted – Samsung, Vaio, Acer, you name it, if runs on Windows there is a thin computer.  And Windows 7 is going to, they tell us, seamlessly transition to Windows 8 when it is released later this year.

Enter Tami Reller, Chief Marketing Officer of Microsoft to discuss W8.  “Charms” will connect the various features of the phone.  She showed off a Samsung tablet with “Metro” style apps that will be available in the Microsoft Windows Store. They are totally throwing themselves onto the HTML 5 bandwagon and demonstrated it with an app called CUT THE ROPE.

“Metro” apps are, as far as I could tell, much like apps you find in the iTunes store but with their own distinctive look and, one assumes, some distinctive functionality.  What that might be, I couldn’t quite tell from the demonstration other than they moved about easily on the desktop.

The Microsoft Online Store will be open in February, as will more brick and mortar Microsoft stores, selling Microsoft gadgets.

“Semantic Zoom” is an ability to enlarge or reduce the size of apps.  There seems to be a wonderful fluidity to the technology.  Tami was absolutely breathless in her enthusiasm.

In what was hoped would be an entertaining way of highlighting tweets from the presentation, Microsoft had the “Tweet Choir” come out, a local Gospel Choir, belting out the tweets [all of them as breathless as Ballmer, Seacrest, Tami and everyone else].

It was cringe worthy.

Ballmer and Seacrest moved onto the Xbox. And THIS is an area that Microsoft is leading in – they are looking for Kinect to help keep them at the forefront, which is where they are.  Here Microsoft is in front of the pack with Kinect translating physical movement to computer commands.

They made much of their integration of voice technology.  Which, unfortunately, even if they are ahead of the pack, it seemed liked they wanted to be seen as ahead of Siri, the voice technology from Apple powering the iPhone 4s. And this is one of the major challenges of Microsoft, they might be first but does anyone believe them?

There is also an app for the phone that will allow the phone to be the remote; Xbox wants to be the entertainment device for the living room. They are offering programming from some major suppliers via the Xbox and it’s impressive.  Gaming mixed with Netflix. 

They want to be at the forefront of two-way TV.  Working with Sesame Street they have done some 2 way shows.  Very interesting and should be great fun for pre-schoolers.  More interesting was the example that allowed the viewer to then be put into the screen and I found myself smiling at that and thinking what great fun that would have been when I was five.

Much noise was made about how Kinect is being integrated into Windows and that is big news.  Xbox and Kinect are two things where Microsoft is genuinely breaking ground these days.

Ballmer went on to cars and Office and Skype and how wonderful all the things are that they are doing on these fronts but they were thrown in at the end, more afterthoughts than primary points.

Truly, it was not a very good last performance.  I would give it a “C.” The amount of forced enthusiasm was depressing at the end, reeking of a kind of unnecessary desperation.  Microsoft has some good things going for it but the impression left behind was not very good – I came away feeling a bit like “poor Microsoft” which was not what Ballmer wanted, I’m sure.

But what does this mean for those of us who use their products?  It means that Microsoft is getting tools which are very interesting, with a promising technological fluidity for which Microsoft has never been particularly known.  The Kinect technology and the Xbox potential is amazing; the early stages of development of two-way programming is amazing even though one can tell it is in its nascent moments.  Here is where I see Microsoft being able to genuine take the field and create wins against their competitors, Apple and Google.

It will provide programmers incredible new opportunities with great potential innovation for story telling.  It will provide new dimensions to Transmedia, the term now being used to describe the integration of storytelling across platforms.

If – and I think it is a big IF – the Microsoft smartphone platform catches on, app developers will have to develop for that too.  Right now iOS and Android control the smartphone world and it may be that Microsoft is too late to the game though it will be interesting to watch.

All of this will be interesting to watch.  This was the first big salvo for CES, which will go on for days and I’m eager to make my next foray into the future, a series Tuesday afternoon, hosted by Ericsson phones about the future of mobile.