In the year 2000....

I learn the scariest crap in IDSc.



The "Did You Know 2.0" went from exciting and amazing to frightening in the blink of an eye. India, over 3 million college graduates a year, every one of them speaks English. Exciting. One in 8 couples met online. Amazing. Myspacetopia, the 8th largest country in the world? Frightening. Formulating the temperature from cricket clicks? Amazing. The World Community Grid? Amazing. VIP implanted computer chips? Frightening.

Web 2.0

I've been sick for the past few days and so, when I called my folks yesterday, the main topic covered was how horrible my voice sounded. The talk then turned to a recommendation to get myself seen, which I had already done. It was the first time (that I can remember, at least) that I had been to the doctor outside of Rochester, MN, or more specifically, Mayo Clinic. It was an uncomfortable feeling, something I wasn't used to. In my own opinion, a personal physician is something very important, someone you can open up to and feel totally comfortable with. You are familiar with their personality, and more importantly, assured of their competence. So what are the options for other people in my situation? I've been lucky enough to be relatively healthy my whole life, and so health care hasn't had to have been a huge priority in my life. There are many, however, whose lifestyle choices are dependent upon annual or bi-annual check-ups. Many of the individuals who come to Mayo Clinic are from out of town, and with the ever struggling economy, it is becoming more financially difficult to come to appointments. I spoke with my dad, who is a Cardiologist at Mayo, about this and he told me about a new virtual consult concept that they are beginning at Mayo to alleviate some of these problems. Mayo is beginning to experiment with long distance "face-to-face" patient visits. Patients with access to the required technological equipment can be "seen" by their primary physician at Mayo from the comfort of their own home, or from their local clinic. The way it was described to me was like a webcam-plus. There is even a way for doctors to perform physical examinations (although my dad had no idea how they were going to pull this off). This would free up more appointment times for Mayo's hospital staff and allow them to see more urgent cases. While yearly check-ups are important, in most cases, these individuals have a clean or at least stable bill of health. This virtual consult technology gives them the comfort of actually seeing their primary physician, and getting reassurance from them, while saving them the cost of flying/driving to Minnesota. At the same time, Mayo is able to treat more patients and take in more revenue. The only negative I could think of would be the effect this service will have on local clinics that will lose business to bigger clinics such as Mayo, John Hopkins, and Cleveland; clinics with the revenue to afford the appropriate technology. Regardless, its an amazing feature, and one that would not be available without the advancements in tech that were discussed in the Web 2.0 articles.

Fighting Terror With Terror

After our discussion yesterday regarding bloggers as 'internet terrorists' my thoughts immediately went to an encounter from last year documented on the HBO show Costas Now, hosted by Bob Costas. The topic of the now defunct show was relevant sports issues, and this particular episode dealt with the rise of the sports blog. Involved in the discussion were Cleveland Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards, then www.deadspin.com Editor-in-Chief Will Leitch, and noted sports author Buzz Bissinger (he wrote Friday Night Lights among other works). I've included a clip from the show below (NOTE: STRONG LANGUAGE) but the main argument is that a) bloggers (as well as their commenters) have free reign to be slanderous and anonymous and b) sports blogs are killing off newspapers as more and more individuals are going online to get their sports info. Here's a direct quote from the author:

Blogs are a, "disgrace the written word. No one sweats over a sentence anymore, no one really cares if a sentence has good grammar or bad grammar. No one really cares if it has the right or wrong word. Blogs are all about opinion, all about getting in your face, and the fact that people love them says they're really not interested in facts, not interested in beautiful writing; they're just interested in having our own opinions certified.

"With the Internet, there's too much information out there, and we've become a very mindless country. I don't know how else to say it: We really revel in ignorance and disinformation."

Buzz comes off as an ass, but he is passionate about his work, and is upset that his colleagues and his work is being taken on the same level as internet bloggers. A real life example of what we discussed.

Someone Else's Dime

A few of my close friends have some sort of Apple i-phone. On it they can i-chat, i-text, i-surf, i-plan, and i-map, to name a few. On my phone I can call people. One of the features on the iPhone is the application widget. You can go online to and download an ever growing number of applications to your phone, some for free, others for a nominal price. What these applications do is extensive to say the least. They can tell you where do go eat, how to get home, or when your dry-cleaning is done. One that is popular with my sister (and many others) is the whoopie cushion and Pull My Finger application. These do pretty much the same thing, and you can assume what exactly that is. With just a tap of the screen, an iPhone can produce one of many fart noises. Its a gas. The price of this application? $0.99. It probably took the designer of this application minutes to create this, and he or she is making an incredible and increasing profit as the days go on. Apple is reaping the benefits as well. By just creating the capability for users to design their own application, Apple has made their customers do the work for them. And with the sky being the limit for application possibilities, all Apple as to do is sit back and let their iUsers creativity take flight. It reminds me of a fundraising gimmick that a local minor league baseball team uses. During the game, a staff member will walk through the audience selling raffle tickest for a buck. Toward the end of then game, a number will be drawn, and the fan holding that number will be entitled to half of the pot. Half. The other half? Goes to the team. For doing absolutely nothing. Genius.

Component Based Businesses

We read an article about SOA for yesterday's class. It broke businesses done into individual services, and described how each could be its own entity; its own money-maker. After the lecture, I second guessed my complete understanding of the topic, but I started to see how I could apply the idea to my most recent employer. I worked at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, a health care provider that has more than 70 different departments or specialties. Combined, all these areas make up the revenue for Mayo, and this is how their profits are determined. About a year ago, Mayo recorded its first net loss for a quarter in some time. They, much like many other corporations, issued cutbacks and tightened their belt a couple notches, wishing to wait out the economic storm. What was interesting, however, was that some departments (i.e. Cardiology) continued to make a profit, even though Mayo as a whole was in the red. The way these departments made money is quite simple, the more patients they saw, procedures they ran, etc. the more profit they brought in. Beyond that, the more physicians they had on staff, the more patients they could see. I'm sure its more complex than this, but if Mayo had instead of making cutbacks everywhere, reallocated funds to certain departments which remained profitable, they may have shown a better return in future quarters.

To Be a Leader

We had Cole Orndorff come speak to our class last week. He is the CIO at Mortenson Construction, an excellent speaker, an interesting fellow, and for whatever reason reminded me of Chris Farley's little brother. His entire presentation was very enlightening, as it was cool to hear about his transformation from an IT dude to a full-fledged major player for Mortenson. I took the weekend to think about what he said and form my own opinions (see: procrastinated). I remember him making one comment in particular about the CEO (I think) for Cisco Systems. He mentioned that while he was an excellent businessman (he may or may not have used the word 'genius') he was also an 'arrogant SOB.' I immediately knew the type: a pompous prick who didn't have time for the little people and thought every idea he had was the correct one. But after thinking about it, isn't this the type of person who needs to be a leader of a company? Granted, all I know of this man is what was described to the class, but it kind of makes sense. An arrogant SOB would believe in himself wholeheartedly, and wouldn't get discouraged when others told him he was wrong, or that his ideas wouldn't work. Maybe he is an asshole, but if that's the case, it wouldn't be an issue for him to make the tough decisions when it came to personnel, etc. If he truly had a strand of genius in him as well (which could very well be the case, considering his position), it would be possible to overlook his crap personality to see the good that he is doing for the company. None of us wants to work for an arrogant SOB, but in the end that might be the type of person we need to be running our businesses.

Oh, canada...

after tuesday's discussion, i had to post this as well. this is what i immediately think of whenever anyone brings up canada....

My Grandma's myspace Page

It amazes me the vast bridge between some individuals electronic/internet savvy. Some people can build websites, 'twitter' while they're on the bus, and spread new chunky pics of Jessica Simpson at a chili cook-off worldwide. Other members of society are either a) convinced they can and will never be up to speed with the WWW or b) are plain frightened of it. Either way, they are markedly inept when compared to their peers. As this new generation ages, and eventually becomes the main core of the workforce, an ability to search, find, create, manipulate, etc. any information available will no longer be a skill of the elite. It will turn into an expectation. Students and professionals alike will expect to have streaming video at their fingertips. They will expect all websites to be interactive and state-of-the-art. Any business out there that offers their services electronically (will be an expectation of everyone sooner than later) will need to be up to speed with all of this, lest they lose costumers or hits or whatever you want to call it, to their competitors. It will no longer be 'who has the best services to offer,' and it will turn into 'who has the services that are the easier/smoothest/coolest/quickest to access.'

Bedtime Reading

I feel asleep soundly reading GIE Foreign Affairs. It was glorious. This morning, with coffee in tow, I pounded through the rest. There was one line that stuck out the most to me from that first piece. It was talking about how innovation today is more than coming out with a new product. Innovation could be a better way to get said product to customers, or a better way of working with partner firms to create products more efficiently. From the consumer point of few, this isn't something you would typically think of. High-school and college kids are more concerned about when the Y-Box or PS4 is going to be released, and not so much about how Sony may have improved their factory efficiencies so that a product cycle that used to take 4 hours now only take 20 minutes.

I had a meeting with my high school's Chief Trust and Compliance Officer after I got caught smoking on campus.

"Did you know that last year the world produced more transistors than grains of rice, at lower cost?" This blew my mind.

Sam Palmisano made a comment that I spoke on in my paper that was due today. His fourth challenge was winning over the hearts and minds of employees of all levels. Change needs to be bought into before it can be implemented. People have a natural tendency to fear what is different and shy away from change. One's comfort zone or security blanket is very difficult to let go of, and it is and will continue to be a great challenge to convince people that change is necessary.

Value 2.0

First off, the fact that craigslist only has 24 employees is mind-boggling, but I guess when you look at the layout/format of their site, you can see where they have scrimped.

In my previous job at Mayo Clinic, we had a little different spin on Pareto's Law. I worked as the Assistant Supervisor of the outpatient desk training program. We hired and trained Clinical Assistants and Patient Appointment Coordinators. Because of the vast number of outpatient desks (70+), we hired over 200 new employees a year. We figured (tweaking the numbers a bit) that we spent 90% of our time taking care of/disciplining/giving additional training to 10% of our hires. I still honestly think we should have incorporated the European soccer rule that if you finish in the bottom 3 of your division that year, you're out, and some new folks get a chance. Anyway...

Full disclosure- I paid $0 for In Rainbows. Worth every penny.

I think one of the difficulties of the Embracing Customers rule is that it would be difficult for start-ups to find their customers first. They could have a top-notch interactive, easy to use site, but if they have a small number of hits, its all for naught. They have to rely on other sites to provide commercials and advertisements for their new sites. Its not like going to the mall and walking by and into a new store you've never seen before.

Being flexible with your company, and in other words utilizing forward-thinking is in my opinion one of the most difficult tasks of a growing business. You need to know when to cut losses, and you need to have some sort of insight into where your customer base is headed. You don't need to be able to see the future, but it would help.

You have to think that there may be some businesses that may be too eager to jump into the virtual world and social software. Some customers out there love the routine of going to the same place, at the same time of week, to get the same sort of goods. Is there a way they can be reached? Obviously, they can't be ignored, and if they are your most reliable customers, they deserve the most attention.