April 16, 2005
US Falls to 13th in Broadband Penetration
One thing I've noticed spending so much time outside the country, is that in many places it seems to be easier to locate public, if not free access outside the US. Last week I returned from a trip to Jacksonville and due to the ground transport arrangements, I had almost a couple of hours to kill. It's bad enough the concessions were nearly non existent at the gate, but there was no Internet to be found. Contrast that to the hotel which not only offered free WiFi, but free ethernet connectivity as well. Pretty much most of the hotels I'm in these days have some sort of broadband, (airports too) though the fancy hotels still want 10 bucks a day and some of the more modest hotels are including it gratis.
At one point last year even though we had a production we were flying from date to date (which is a whole other story in itself...) and throughout much of Europe, even in the smallest Italian and Spanish airports, there was WiFi. Not always free, but generally always available. Even the tour of Mexico I was on 18 months ago it was pretty easy to get broadband, or at least an Internet cafe or hotel business center with good access.
Seems as though my feeling "the rest of the world is better connected than us" is at least somewhat justified. In a report issued last September, the US has fallen to 13th place in the per capita penetration of broadband Internet connectivity. Noted technorati Om Malik is trying to put a spin on this in that our percentage of penetration is low, but the raw numbers are high. He notes that "It’s easy to wire a country the size of say Florida, but it’s darn hard to wire-up a continent." One flaw in that reasoning is that the US doesn't have a national program to deploy and develop connectivity offers. In the States each area is controlled and limited by ILECs and local cable providers. The CLECs have mostly checked out after the bubble and still use the wire and infratructure of ILECs anyway and don't have access to the cable networks. Could these other countries be gaining faster because they aren't burdened by disparate standards by monopolistic incombants and outdated Federal laws? Could it be that they just have abetter handle on it than we do? Companies like Orange and Vodaphone are quick to adapt offerings and deploy new technologies whereas over here companies like Verizon, Qwest and Comcast have death grips on the technology and have been slow to invest and deploy the technology.
Although they haven't blown networking like they did with wireless service. Well, not yet anyway though they seem to be trying...
Posted by Dave at 10:48 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
November 23, 2003
First Day of School
I pulled my rented Ford Explorer in front of the non descript building on Main St in Whitinsville, MA just after 9:00 AM on a cold winter morning in November. It had been more than two months since the deal to sell the Live-Audio_Board had been sealed. During that time I'd been searching for office and data center space in Seattle, though later I was told the offices would be located in Whitinsville. I'd found world-class data center space in Seattle, we just needed to seal the deal. At the time, the LAB was running from a managed colo space at Rackspace.com in San Antonio, Texas.
Just about the time the sale went down, the colo host at the time had discovered they hadn't billed the prior year's worth of fees, and halted service without notice. These unorganized morons, operating under the name of Speakeasy.org were in danger of quashing our deal. I called the support line, got them to reprovision the server and promptly transfered all of the data to an account at Rackspace. The LAB was offline for about three hours. That was old history at this point. It happened a couple of months ago, and we were safe at Rackspace now. I was at the door of my first "real" job in about 20 years. I didn't know what to think.
I entered the rather well used retail space, converted to office space, still itching from the cold. I'm a California boy, relocated to Seattle just in time to catch the Grunge Rock revolution of the early 90's. For me, 60 degrees is cold. It was below freezing and there was snow on the ground. I was about 10 feet into the office when a woman that I recognized, asked if I needed any help.
"I think I work here" was my reply.
"Excuse me", she responded in a thick New England accent. I had recongnized her as the assistant to the other founder of this particular venture, the guy that bought my site. She met several hundred if not several thousand people in her tenure as the assistant to the co founder of one of the most successful pro audio manufacturers at that time. I wasn't surprised she didn't recognize me. I didn't expect her to.
"I'm Dave Stevens", I offered.
She was expecting me. She was the Office Manager. She responded welcoming me and giving me an impromtu tour of the still spartan facilities. We were to occupy this bottom suite, next to the local public access TV channel and the business office of the local cable TV provider until we moved into the soon to be remodeled upstairs offices. One of the reasons it was decided to locate in this building was because the other founder bought it, along with another dilapadated property across the street. Downtown Whitinsville was a wreck, a shell of it's former self. The Walmart down the street had ravaged the local businesses to the point where except for a few stores, a real estate office, Subway sandwich, Blue Moon Diner (one of the best breakfasts in the world, and I've been all over the world), Peg's Diner in the old train car, the downtown strip was pretty much wiped out. Way to go Sam Wall. Another local economy butt fucked out of existance. At least the big pro audio manufacturer was still down the street, a few hundred yards away.
I settled into a desk near the front. The others had already laid claim on their turf. They'd been in the office for more than a week while I was still on the west coast. The cable modem had been installed, but we still lacked a proper network. The installer was due later that day. There was a hodge podge of cables that connected the four others in the office. It was very startup like. My pulse was racing with excitement. This was way fucking cool. I was about to be a mogul. Or so my narrow ass thought...
Just after 10:00, the others began to arrive. First, the Director of Operations. I knew him from the trade show gig he had at the pro audio manufacturer. He suceeded the previous person in that gig that I got to know very well. Too well, in fact, before she left for greener pastures. I'd met him at our AES rollout, where we announce the intention of the site. His tit got in the ringer when we were giving out shirts that might have been considered disparaging to his then employer (and the company our other founder built). There were some pissed off people over that. Bummer... A few weeks later he was offered a position with the newly formed Universal Concept Inc and he took it. I had nothing to do with the name, not that I disapproved. I was called one Sunday night in October, told we were hiring some good folks and this was the name of the parent company. We'd been soft launching and prototyping the site since just after the announcement of the sale. The domain ProSoundWeb.com was registered prior to our deal being consumated. I didn't think much of the parent company name or staff as I had a date waiting and didn't want to do any business at that point. That was two weeks prior to my arriving in Whitinsville.
The second to arrive, just after 10:30, was the Goddess of Content. I remembered her from the time I'd spent at the pro audio manufacturer. I thought she was a hottie then, this time I was in love. No, really. She had beauty, brains, attitude (attitude is a must when dealing with me), tatoos and piercings. Nevermind she was 15 years my junior and didn't share my feelings.
So, there we all were, not really knowing what to do. The other founder made it in about noon and we got to work with our first full staff meeting. I still didn't know what to think. My prior 20 years were made up of touring and regional PA company operations. I didn't really know how this regular business stuff worked, though I'd managed and operated a couple of sucessful businesses over the years. I was a fish out of water, though I don't think it showed.
The five of us were about to do something no one else had done at that point. We were going to introduce the pro audio industry to the world of the Internet. Others had tried. We were going to be the one's that defined pro audio on the Internet.
Posted by Dave at 12:15 PM
November 11, 2003
The Day the LAB Died
It was a typical late summer night, the Thursday prior to Labor Day in the year 2000. I was sitting in a suite in the Wall Center Tower Two. thirty floors above downtown Vancouver. The two "special friends" that I had met earlier that night at the club in the Cecil Hotel had already showered, packed and headed back to the club. It was still early, just after midnight. On what should have been one of the happiest days of my life, tears filled my eyes. Earlier that day I'd just sealed the biggest deal of my life. I'd sold the Live-Audio_Board site and secured a rather well paying job after several weeks of negociations. As my normal custom over Labor Day for the last few years, I made the trip to Vancouver for the Molson Indy Vancouver race. I knew things were going to change, little did I know how much. I was in for the ride of my life, I just hoped I could hold on.
That was the beginning of the end, though perhaps the beginning of the end was really about the time I started looking for a buyer. I'd had a few offers, none I took too seriously. While the revenue from banners at the time would have made for an OK part time endevor, I wanted something more. In retrospect I was probably being greedy, caught in dot com era heyday. I wanted the LAB and it's newborn cousin ProSoundWeb.com to become the Amazon.com of pro audio on the Internet, if you will. The other attempts by the media giants were miserable failures at this point. They just couldn't find the formula and were busy trying to apply the manufacturer driven content model of the trade pubs to the Web. It wasn't working. They missed the fact that interactivity was the whole point of the Internet. Even though the Internet bubble had burst the previous April when I was in Europe, there were still some people willing to play.
What really hurt the LAB was not so much the pressure from some manufacturers once we started selling more ad space, was that due to increased publicity there were more and more coming to the site. In fact, far more visitors than there were people doing sound for a living. At first it wasn't that bad, there were still a fair amount of Old Skool LABsters (OSL) that could come in and help set things straight. One thing I've found that's instrumental in a community such as this is that the participants at least respect the moderators of the community. In turn the mods have to be fair in the moderation and fairly knowledgeable about the community interest or at least know where to go for the answers. A moderator must do more than tell errant posters to follow the rules. The key components of a sucessful online community are leadership, trust, honesty and integrity.
It is absolutely important that the moderator have the trust and respect of the community, else the lunatics start to run the asylum. Too often when that happens it's not the "alpha loons" like Randle Patrick McMurphy, but lesser know, less capable, less respected inmates. What they lack in knowledge they make up for in shear number of posts and greatly add to the noise, without adding substance to the community. Another plague is what I call the "drive by" posters. That's where a poster has no interest in the community other than as a one-way research forum. Often, if not most time they have a sense of entitlement. They are typically younger, less experienced members of the community and are being raised in a digital world. They feel they are entitled to answers for mearly having access to the resource. If the answer isn't the one they were looking for some get argumentitive even though they have not one basic clue as to the subject matter. This "info on demand" phenomenon is one of the great benefits of the Internet. It's also an achilles heel when used in a disrespectful manner.
There is a thirst for knowledge on the subject. One has to make an effort to find it. There is no short cut for hard work. Having a browser and a cable modem is no substitute for experience, hard work and experimentation along with a healthy dose of mentoring. Kids, you need to get off your asses and work. It's true, many of you do, and if you keep at it and get some of the right breaks, things will come your way and you'll have a rewarding career in the business. Even if you do all that, some of you will not make it. Sorry, that's the the way it is. The transition into the industry can be difficult and not having another means of support or willing to make the sacrifices required will most certainly up the risk of failure. The industry did just fine before the Internet and will continue to do so. The Internet is just one powerful tool. By no means the only tool available to a student of audio.
I'll stop short of proclaiming the LAB dead for the moment. The LAB is a patient in critical condition, though there still continues to be some of the type of discussion that built the repuation of the LAB. The cancer of newbieism continues to slowly kill the patient, forcing it onto life support. All while the surgeons debate over what color to paint the operating room.
'Til next time....
Dave
Posted by Dave at 12:26 PM | Comments (1)