September 2009 Archives

Listen to the podcast

While on a trip to London this week, I took a day to visit Birmingham.  It's about 90 minutes north on Virgin Rail.  I met with Chris Price, Director of Digital Development & Communities, and his boss, Glyn Evans, Corporate Director of Business Change for the City Council.  I had a chance to hear from them and many other talented people about their Digital Birmingham project, as well as their science park, universities, a new Science City development program and a US$1 billion Business Transformation IT project expected to generate a $2.5 bn return for the city.

Exciting stuff, which I will be keeping an eye on.  But on the way back to London, I was unable to get out of my head an offhand comment by Glyn Evans.  He described research the community had done into the needs of its population.  "There's a myth," said Glyn, "that the low-income population are late adopters of ICT.  They are on the wrong side of the digital divide.   But our research showed that many of them are very early adopters.  They are immigrants, and they use email, IP voice, social networks and video chat to stay in touch with their home countries.  It's the kids, of course, but they teach their parents and grandparents, and the knowledge spreads."

That's a great insight, and it made me wonder how much the progress of communities is held back by just such myths. I have met many of them first-hand.  In Cleveland, Ohio, one of America's poorest big cities, there is a pervasive myth that the town is in permanent decline.  That myth is based on a lot of hard experience.  But as I did radio interviews there two years ago, everyone I talked to was surprised and skeptical to hear about the community's achievements.  This is a place that is home to one of the USA's biggest and most innovative hospitals, the Cleveland Clinic, a world-class university, the OneCommunity broadband network, and so much more.  There's a multi-billion-dollar transportation rebuild going right down the middle of Main Street.  But many people, perhaps the majority, see only stagnation.  They do not see the connection between these things and their future.  It is the myth that stands in their way - and the feeling, deep down inside, that they lack something permanent and vital in themselves.  Whereas, all they really lack are the right skills and the confidence to take the hard road toward acquiring them.   

Dundee, Scotland was also saddled with the myth of decline, after experiencing too many decades of the real thing.  It was research by the City Council that revealed, in the early Nineties, the first net job growth in twenty years.  It was coming, not from the old manufacturing or publishing sectors, but from new media, gaming and IT businesses that were spinning out of the universities.  Local government was smart enough to fan this small flame with a series of innovation projects and incentives in partnership with business, educators and the national government.  From 2000 to 2004, the city had net employment growth of 3.4%.  That may not sound impressive - until you learn that it includes the loss of 3,300 manufacturing jobs.  The losses were countered by a 20% growth in digital media, 50-60% growth in life sciences jobs, and a 7% increase in new business start-ups. 

One of the secrets to Dundee's success was their willingness to stop listening to the myth of decline, and to listen to the facts instead.  Like Birmingham, they spent some of their scarce funds on researching what was actually going on in the community, instead of assuming that the present was just another chapter of the dismal past.   

In Japan, people are saddled with a different myth.  It is that all power is concentrated in the hands of big business and the government, the individual is helpless, and a small group of powerbrokers will always run things to suit themselves.  According to an old Japanese saying, "It is the nail that stick out which gets hammered down."  Shigata ga nai, they say, which a New Yorker would translate as "what are you gonna do?"

Yet in Mitaka, a suburb of Tokyo, this kind of fatalism does not seem to apply.  When Mitaka became our Intelligent Community of the Year in 2005, the Mayor was a woman, which is even more unusual in that nation than in my own.  Moreover, she was citizen activist who had led many successful campaigns to change local government policy.  Her economic development strategy focused, not on big business, but on promoting the growth of the entrepreneurial SOHO sector that had spun out of the many research labs in the area.  The myths of the culture did not seem to stand anybody's way in Mitaka - and with the recent rout of the old Liberal Democratic Party at the national level, maybe the same change is coming to the rest of the country. 

Belief is powerful.  It is belief in a better future that powers the amazing transformation that Intelligent Communities are creating every day.  But belief can also be the obstacle: the dead hand of the past that holds us in place when the time has come to move forward.  If you are a community leader, finding and countering the myths in your midst may be some of the most important work you do.  

Listen to the podcast

While running for President of the United States, Barack Obama developed a mighty online fundraising machine.  In the first two months of 2008, his campaign raised US$91 million.  In February alone, supporters donated $45 million, most of it online, and 90% of it in amounts of less than $100. 

It was the first nationwide example of a digital culture of use applied to a successful run for President.  Obama supporters were all about broadband - and apparently they still are.  A September 11 story in NetPulse, a weekly newswire from Politics Online, reported on the digital impact of a case of very bad manners.  The rudeness in question came from a member of the US House of Representatives during President Obama's September 9 address to a joint session of Congress.  For those not following our healthcare debate in the States, the President was interrupted by Congressman Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, who could not resist sharing his opinion about Mr. Obama's claim that illegal aliens would not receive tax-funded care under his plan.  Shouted Mr. Wilson: "You lie!"

As a matter of fact, the United States already reimburses hospitals for the cost of treating illegal aliens in their emergency rooms and the laws under debate are unlikely to change that.  So the issue, like so much in politics, isn't really what it appears.  But that's a story for another day. 

One interesting thing we learned from this episode is the House of Representatives has rules against calling the President a liar to his face.  Apparently such things have happened before.  Mr. Wilson has already apologized publicly but he may be forced to apologize again on the floor of the House.  But the most interesting story took place in cyberspace.  It turns out that Mr. Wilson is up for re-election.  Perhaps that helps explain what happened.  But in any case, within minutes of the incident, according to NetPulse, the name, address, Web site and phone number of his opponent had spread around the Web.  The opponent is Rob Miller, a retired US Marine and Iraq War veteran who lost to Mr. Wilson in 2008.  Within 8 hours of Wilson shouting "You lie!" on TV, Mr. Miller had brought in about $400,000 in online donations.  Two days later, he had raised nearly three quarters of a million dollars from more than 20,000 supporters. 

Mr. Wilson also found himself on the receiving end of some other people's bad manners.  Within minutes of his comment, somebody updated his Wikipedia page to read, "He is an [expletive] that called the president of the United States a liar on national television and has no respect for the office he holds."  The online encyclopedia quickly removed the entries but eventually had to disable the editing feature completely to keep other attackers at bay. 

Now, Mr. Wilson did not leave the digital battlefield entirely to Mr. Miller's supporters.  He posted a video to YouTube asking for donations and has raised more than $200,000 from supporters.  But so far, the digital wind appears to be at the back of those using broadband to protest his behavior. 

I know that we're a bit crazy in the US about money and politics.  I mean, we actually measure the progress of political campaigns by how much money they raise.  But then, we also measure how good movies are by how they did at the box office.  Nevertheless, money is a sign of commitment.  We part with it only for things we value.  Day by day, the virtual world penetrates more deeply into the physical world in which we live.  I think the lesson we can all take away from the "shout heard 'round the Web" is that what you do in the physical world now has digital consequences, and vice versa, whether it takes place in your community or on the global stage. 

What I see everywhere is the broadband economy at work.  There is a big old store called Dodge Grain.  It seems to be a general hardware store today but, once upon a time, must have been Salem's center for the sale of everything a working farm requires.  It is near the center of town, where two state highways cross.  But if there was once a true town center there, it is long gone.  Individual buildings stand in parking lots.  Many have "For Lease" signs or look abandoned.  Yet I counted seven banks and one expensive-looking restaurant during a half-hour drive about town.  There appears to be money around, and I suspect a lot of it comes from retirees.  A large lake nearby looks like a summertime magnet, and an historic racetrack runs horses from June through August.   

I soon saw why the town center is anemic: there is a gigantic Walmart a short distance north, and a shopping mall a little bit south, no doubt filled with national brand stores.  Most of the restaurants are national brands, too: McDonalds and Burger King, of course, but also Outback Steakhouse, Margaritas and Dennys.  This morning at breakfast at one of these establishments, both of the women serving us had that distinctly American mark of the working poor: bad and missing teeth.  If they are lucky enough to have medical insurance, it probably does not cover dentistry.  And when you live paycheck-to-paycheck, just try justifying twice yearly visits to the dentist.

Scattered here and there, however, are upscale multi-family housing developments, and new office buildings that house medical groups, university extension facilities and what look like new technology companies.  I learned from our hotel's front desk that this region even boasts its very own cluster.  There are no less than eight wedding facilities within easy driving distance, which probably share a pool of regional suppliers - the same ones who are currently accessing my wallet. 

What does this have to do with the broadband economy?  Based on the Intelligent Community nominations I have read (submit yours before September 21!), I guess that Salem is another example of 20th Century prosperity that dried up and blew away.  It developed a seasonal economy based on the racetrack and lake.  I suspect the wedding cluster arose because wealthy businessmen of the earlier era built mansions here.  Our wedding is taking place at such a mansion built in 1915 in the shape of a European castle and now in the possession of a local convent. 

The national chains are here, as they are throughout the world, because broadband makes it possible to manage far-flung businesses as though they were across the street.  These service businesses have economies of scale and efficiency that no purely local business can match.  The bad news is that the jobs they offer do not pay enough to create a path into the middle class.   But overlaid on this late 20th Century economy are signs of the new economy.  The technology companies and university office parks are an hour's drive from the tech corridor surrounding Boston - but only milliseconds by broadband.  No doubt the companies opening offices talk about the benefits of challenging, well-paid work in a location with a wonderful lifestyle.  Now if they can just help local people qualify for those jobs, they could have an economic revival on their hands.