Random thoughts in the middle of April

My apologies
Here it is, April 16 and I haven’t written a thing here since the first of March. I apologize if you’ve been checking in for what I might have to say and found nothing. Work and traveling have helped kept me a bit to frazzled to write here. I’ll try to do a better job. Stay tuned…

Travel observations
My travels in the last month (and an interesting conversation with a friend) have led me to the conclusion that we have a problem with pervasiveness of cell phones. I’m fleshing out my thoughts and will have something more to say in a few days.

Have you ever noticed that when you traveling alone and enter a restaurant for dinner, you automatically get the worst table. It’s like they want to hide the fact that someone is eating alone. Why not put a sign out front that says, “Only happy, boisterous people served. Two people minimum required. Groups of 4 or more preferred. We do have an image to uphold.” Please….

I spoke at the Alzheimer’s Association Finance Director’s conference a couple of weekends ago. It was in Las Vegas. There’s some irony there, don’t you think? Great people, though. I enjoyed their company and hospitality.

Internet World Essentials Conference
I met an interesting person yesterday—Jack Powers of International Informatics Institute (www.in3.org) who has a very interesting perspective on technology and future direction. I came away from our conversations thinking that I need to be asking “why” much more often. Questioning the status quo leads to innovation.

While I’m on the topic of innovation, I’ve also concluded that the Internet has not changed much since 1998. Sure, we are using it to support more operational functions in business, but largely there hasn’t been any significant gain from a consumer perspective. I’ll get some argument here, but communities, portals and corporate website are all about providing information that we think we might need. Where’s the innovation in this? We’re not thinking, folks. There must be something more that we can do with this tool to benefit the consumer beyond the ability to buy something online or research. What is it?

The Internet World Conference has been interesting, although still quite basic. Considering what it was at its heyday in the late 1990’s, it looks more like a user group than a conference these days. However, the people that I’ve talked with are either just getting started with the Internet (and need this basic information) or are confirming that they still have a grasp of what’s happening in this space. It has its place, but it is sure a different place than before.

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