Gene Carr's Patron Technology Blog

The Last Gasp for Analog Olympics

It's been a while since I've posted here, because it's been a while since I've felt inspired. But reading about the Olympics these past few days has gotten my juices flowing.

Seems to me we're about to witness a pretty big technological thunderstorm.

On the one side we have NBC, the owner of the digital content for the Olympics. Before the Web, you could only get Olympics information direct from NBC, as they were the sole carrier for these events (here in the U.S.). In the last few Olympic years, the Web has started to seep in, and some events were streamed live online, and some highlight videos were posted as well, to supplement the nightly TV coverage.

I read that NBC will carry most things live this year because Western Canada's timezones work with ours, but it is planning to withhold some events for later rebroadcast, so as to improve its ratings. (And while they're offering online coverage, it's restricted -- here in NY, for instance, if you're not a cable subscriber, you're locked out of certain on-demand content.)

Come on -- this is pre-Internet thinking.

Because on the other side, you have digital news sources and bloggers, who care not at all about when NBC wants to announce who has won. These sources will reveal what's happening instantly. And if that's not quick enough for you, pay attention to Twitter. I predict that in the next few days, Twitter will become the "breaking news" source for the Olympics.

NBC won't be able to stop it, and in the end my guess is that people will be frustrated with the delayed television coverage. I'm guessing that this is the last gasp for the old analog Olympics - where media is controlled by one source. 

I'm waiting for what seems inevitable - live streaming in real time of each and every Olympic event. Is there any reason why we shouldn't have that?  That way the folks that are addicted to a secondary sport such as curling can be as happy as those who want to follow figure skating. 

And, for all you arts fans out there, I'm sure you see where I'm going with this. As I wrote in a post back in September, it's not going to be long before live streaming of cultural events becomes the norm as well.

Twittering Concert Notes & More

Now here's something interesting -- I read in ArtsJournal this morning that the National Symphony is going to do a real-time Twitter stream of program notes during a symphony performance. Here's the article that includes the press release.

For years, many people have been discussing the idea of a handheld device in the concert hall which would do approximately the same thing. In fact, some years ago, Roland Valliere, the new Executive Director of the Columbus Symphony, brought a good deal of thinking and investment dollars and put together a PDA "concert companion," which enabled concert-goers to not only read program notes in real time, but also watch video of the conductor from other angles other than his/her back. It was the right idea, but too early and too expensive.

Now we're looking at something more practical, and just like the iPhone tour guide product I wrote about in my last post, this is simple to execute.

Sadly, the press release above says that this experiment will be done on the lawn of an outdoor concert and that Filene Center forbids electronic devices in the hall. Why did they have to add that to the press release? Why couldn't they just say, "If this works well, we may allow patrons to bring devices into the hall in the future? "

Anyway, imagine now not program notes from a concert, but opera subtitles? Isn't a Twitter-stream of the dialogue a better, more subtle approach than the imposing overhead titles many opera houses have now? And of course, doing it via Twitter opens up the opportunity for multiple streams with different content, depending on the interests of the recipient. I, for one, would love such a thing for the next ballet performance I go to, since I usually have no idea what's going on.

This is all fascinating to me, and basically free for any enterprising arts organization that wants to experiment. I look forward to hearing about more of this stuff. 

Arts, Tourism, and Technology Wow

I’ve been in Italy on holiday for the last week, and while looking at extraordinary history from the 13^th and 14^th centuries, I tried to keep my eye out for what will eventually be extraordinary history from the 21^st century. I didn’t find much until one day when wandering by a spanking new tour office with a sign for “iPhone tours.” This intrigued me. 

Turns out a week ago, this tourism company started renting iPhones preloaded with dozens of 3- to 10-minute video narratives of key historical sites, museums and the like. Using the phone's visual GPS, I could navigate easily to pretty much any spot in Florence, and the phone included organized itineraries so I could map out a logical order of seeing things.

What had been a somewhat cumbersome experience of finding my way on the map, opening the guide book, finding the page, and reading about what I was seeing, suddenly became entirely now. I was now listening to my own personal guide (in most cases with appropriately chosen music underscoring) and seeing on the video specifically what I should be looking for. It was particularly helpful inside churches where it’s not always clear where to find the chapels.

What was surprisingly helpful was watching the short videos as a way of selecting where to go – there’s never enough time to see everything, and often the descriptions in the guide books are nothing compared to watching a video preview.

 

What I experienced was version 1.0 of this new product. As the beaming salesperson (who I think may have been the owner of the company) explained, the phones are of course already Web-enabled (which let me check my e-mail and news for free, rather than paying for an internet café or over-priced hotel access), but soon you’ll be able to use it as a real phone for the day as well. So if you’re traveling with someone, now there's a really good way of keeping track of each other, particularly with the new apps that let you see where your friends are on a map. 

Just like the Web is no a replacement for printed book, but something rather different, this approach is far more than a electronic replacement for a guide book. I can only imagine how useful it will be when you can call up cultural events happening while you’re in a city, buy tickets that you can use with a bar-coded entrance rather than a ticket, and get discounts already arranged by the tour company.

It also suggests a time when rather than having the tours pre-loaded onto the phone, you could merely stream them directly from a Web site. That opens up tons of possibilities because you won’t then need to rent a particular device – anyone could access any tour from anywhere. And the tours could be developed by anyone – imagine a city-tour for foodies hosted by your favorite celebrity chef, or an art gallery tour given by a noted art historian.

This has the potential to completely revolutionize the travel experience. Those of you who are explorers and cringe at all of this technology removing the sense of discovery will hate this. But I found it to be a whole new way of experiencing travel – and I think it's going to reinvent what some refer to as cultural tourism.

Do You Have an Open Relationship With Your Software?

From my perch as someone who is watching the development of software systems across the board, there are some trends in the industry that have been happening slowly but surely for the last few years. And these trends more or less define whether a software company is part of yesterday's world, or tomorrow's world. Microsoft has clearly been in yesterday's world, and Google has been on the other end of the spectrum.

So it was of some interest that Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, put out an announcement this week indicating a shift in his company's longer-term strategy. Apparently the big ship Microsoft is shifting direction. His prose is what you would expect from a software executive, and here it is:

"Application design patterns at both the front- and back-end are transitioning toward being compositions and in some cases loose federations of cooperating systems, where standards and interoperability are essential... At a higher level, myriad options exist for delivering applications to the user: The web browser, unique in its ubiquity; the PC, unique in how it brings together interactivity/experience, mobility and storage; the phone, unique in its extreme mobility. Developers will need to build applications that can be delivered seamlessly across a loosely coupled device mesh by utilizing a common set of tools, languages, runtimes and frameworks – a common toolset that spans from the service in the cloud to enterprise server, and from the PC to the browser to the phone."

What he's saying is that the age of the "walled garden" where you buy a closed software system is over. Systems that "talk" to each other and transfer data seamlessly are going to dominate, and will do so using the Web as the transfer medium.

In our case, PatronMail is built that way. We have what's known as an API and we're in the process of partnering with several companies to make the transfer of PatronMail e-mail information happen instantly and automatically. Sadly, in our industry there are still many software companies in the ticketing and fundraising arenas that have not caught this bug. They are still singing the "do it our way, or take the highway" song. And this is to the detriment of you - the arts executive that wants to have "best of breed" software, at the best price.

So if you're out shopping for new software, start thinking differently and asking different questions. Ask how open the systems are. Find out if you can add on other systems to integrate with what you are buying, or if that decision is left solely to the vendor. In my view, vendors should make it as easy as possible for you to get what you want -- that's both good for business and good for our industry.

The Live Video Phone-ization of the World

I've been sitting for a few days with a link to this article from the LA Times, trying to decide if it is a good thing or not. The article talks about Qik.com, a startup I heard about at the NTEN Conference in New Orleans a few weeks ago. There are others doing the same thing, such as Flixwagon.com.

These services provide a way for anyone to stream live video to the Web from their cell phones. My guess is that this technology will soon be ubiquitous. 

If you've been to a rock concert recently, you've probably seen several dozen cameras poking above the heads of the crowd snapping digital pictures, or even recording entire songs or whole concerts which then get posted to Youtube within hours. Soon, those same cell phones will be in the air more or less permanently, recording and streaming the events live.

Aside from the obvious copyright issues (which everyone is dealing with), I've decided that this is ultimately going to be a good thing for non-profits. What may happen is that the burden of broadcasting events (whether they are live concerts, a pre-theatre talk, a lecture, rally, or board meeting) will shift from the organization to all the rest of us. Let's say I'm interested in hearing a pre-theatre talk with a director, but I can't make it to the event and the XYZ theatre staff is just too busy to organize a recording of it. No problem, the audience will be there to take care of it and post it online.

The net result will be that information of a more immediate nature, and of higher quality, will be more accessible more frequently. For any mission-based organization, that can only be a good thing. 

The Newest Coolest Technology from the Source of All New Cool Things

This morning I was at the keynote speech at the NTEN annual conference, taking place in New Orleans. The speaker was David Pogue, the NY Times's highly engaging and amusing technology writer. His speech was a "what's hot" in new technology for non-profits, and he focused on a lot of free or very inexpensive services. Since I follow his column, I didn't find that much new.

However, one thing he showed knocked me out, and you'll quickly see why. Yesterday, I was walking around New Orleans and wanted to find the name and address of a restaurant -- I knew it was called "Mothers" but that was about it. I used the Google 411 service (which is at 800-466-4411). It's a completely voice-activated service, but unlike the normal 411 service, it's free. It's also pretty clunky and I never actually got the information I was looking for, after about four tries in the space of ten minutes.

So, this morning as I was listening to Mr. Pogue, he started extolling the virtues of Google's text-messaging information service. You can send a text to 46645, and find out things like airline arrival times, weather forecasts, directions, and a whole host of other information. As he was giving his talk I sent a text with the words "mother's restaurant new orleans," and within about three seconds I got a response with complete information about the restaurant, including the address and a phone number (try it yourself!).

Aside from wanting to share this information, and to report that the restaurant had amazing seafood gumbo, it occurred to me that this service proves yet again how far ahead text-based queries are vs. voice-activated inquiries. I'll probably write more about what Pogue had to say in future posts, but this little item was so useful I wanted to share it first.

TiVo and the Future of Advertising - The revolution is coming, slowly but surely

Many years ago, well before the general public had ever heard of TiVo, there was a cover story in The New York Times Magazine about how TiVo and other similar technologies were going to allow consumers to "time-shift" their tv-watching, and in doing so completely revolutionize the advertising industry. 

Much to my surprise, eight years later, the effects of TiVo and DVRs are only now just penetrating the advertising world, and there's a lot of turmoil in the industry as the old precepts of television advertising are giving way. Yesterday I read this article about a study in the U.K., which shows that 79% of people who have the technology that gives them ability to skip through commercials actually do so. Presumably they do this manually, fast-forwarding through each commercial break. Now, I have a friend who is a bit of a self-taught programmer, and he has rigged his computer such that he can watch television on it and it automatically skips all the commercials. I figure won't be long before this kind of technology becomes widespread.

The point of all this is that we're still just seeing the very beginning of the revolution that's coming to consumer advertising. Now that there's research that shows that consumers will avoid the commercials that have been thrust in front them, advertisers are going to be forced to seek other ways to reach them.

My bet is that in the next few years, we'll be reading headlines talking about a huge amount of transplanted advertising -- moving from the relatively mass market of television, to the much more targeted arena of the Web. It's already happening, but I think the press and the stock market have both greatly underestimated what's coming. In the last week or so, Google's stock price dipped over fears of lower advertising revenue. That's very short-term thinking.

I think we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. In another few years, advertising will be increasingly targeted, and Web advertising will become the dominant form of advertising to consumers, and will be supported by traditional media, rather than the other way around.

Technology Nirvana

I've been in a bit of a blogging lull for the past week or so, as nothing has really inspired me. But this morning something happened which was a technologically seamless experience that lived up to the promise of the digital revolution.

I was on my way to an 8:00 AM meeting on Sixth Avenue in New York, and I didn't remember the address correctly. So, I decided to use the free, voice activated and completely automated phone directory service that Google offers (called Google 411). It recognized when I told it my city and state, and then correctly "heard" the name of the company I was visiting. Then after it repeated the phone number, the voice said something like, if you want detailed information sent to your cell phone say "text." In about 5 seconds I got a text message with the correct name and address of the company I was visiting. And I got to the meeting early.

A technological slam dunk. In a world in which my Microsoft Outlook crashes every day, I had a little early morning celebration of how great technology is when it works right.

The "To Podcast or Not" conundrum

For some years now I've been commenting on the relatively big PR footprint that podcasting has in the media, and the relatively small actual usage of the technology itself. It's why I haven't rushed to do a regular podcast myself.

I was somewhat surprised at the seminar on Monday that so many arts marketers were interested in doing podcasts. It's definitely now the becoming the flavor of the month -- one of those new Web things that sounds sexy. But my point is that sure it's sexy, but it takes TIME which is better spent doing other online marketing actvities which may be less sexy but have more impact. (Like building your e-mail list.) 

Lest you think think I'm just throwing cold water on a new technology that's not e-mail marketing, read this from yesterday's e-marketer.com posting:

clipped from www.emarketer.com

Podcast distribution and viewing mechanisms are proliferating, but even the most widely consumed podcasts typically have under 50,000 downloaders – and most have far fewer.

iPod sales are seemingly unstoppable and downloadable serialized short content format is increasingly available. But, despite an incessant buzz about the medium, regular podcast users are still hard to find. As such, podcasting remains a niche-marketing channel. The question is: Will the situation change?