Technology, Unexpected

Library of Congress saves Tree Octopus (& podcast)

The Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus website, archived by the Library of Congress.

That clever meme. Cute cat pictures. Terrifying urban legends. All shared, and spread, on social media and sites. And all worth preserving as “web culture?”

That’s how I introduced what is one of my favorite interviews in my GeekWire podcast series on pop culture and the arts: an interview with Library of Congress officials about their new Web Cultures Web Archive.

But it was not a smooth road to recording. It took three attempts on three dates over six months to get to the finished podcast and feature article.

First, some backstory. The podcast episode had its genesis when I was having dinner in Washington D.C. with Trevor Owens, inaugural head of digital content management for library services at the Library of Congress. He mentioned some incredibly interesting work he’d been doing at the world’s largest library, taking “born-digital” content (materials that have never existed in any other form other than digitally) and archiving it for everyone to see online.

That was in September 2017. I was on vacation. I’d just started my podcast series for GeekWire a month earlier. I thought, “Wow, this could be a cool topic.” I asked if he’d be interested in coming on the show, and he agreed.

We exchanged several emails over the next month, reviewing background on the various projects in various parts of the sprawling LoC. I finally decided to focus on the American Folklife Center and its online collection of archived sites that document what the LoC calls “emergent cultural traditions on the web,” from emojis and GIFs to Creepypasta and Slashdot.

Both Trevor and Nicki Saylor, head of the American Folklife Center Archive at the Library of Congress, agreed to record the podcast remotely from D.C. Clare McGrane, my ace producer, worked out a seamless way to use Skype to record two different guests at two different locations in addition to recording me asking my questions from the GeekWire studio in real-time.

So far, so good.

One of the primarily text web sites in the Web Cultures Web Archive, from 2002.

The first recording date approached, in November. A few days beforehand, Clare and I realized while we had all the technical pieces set, we hadn’t actually tested them working together. There was a small glitch. To play it safe, we apologetically postponed. The holidays were ahead, so the next date that worked was in January.

Specifically January 22. The one and only weekday of the federal government shutdown of early 2018. The Library of Congress was shuttered. No interview.

We rescheduled a second time for early March. The Friday before our Monday recording date, a huge storm slammed D.C. and also shut the Library of Congress. We crossed our fingers. We bit our fingernails. By Monday, everything had melted and re-opened.

The third time was the charm. The result you hear sounds relaxed and spur of the moment, as though we’d just decided to have a chat.

That, more than anything else, is the magic of audio. And a really good producer.

There’s a lot of information and geeky fun in this podcast and story for library and web history buffs. Do enjoy reading, “Library of Congress saves the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and other online ‘web cultures’” and the related GeekWire “popcast.” It was a half-year in gestation.

And let me again thank Trevor and Nicki for their patience and good humor, and Clare for pulling it all together.

 

Marketing, Technology, Unexpected

Why I’m flipping my work model to writing more, consulting less

Three decades ago, I began my career in the tech industry. But what some don’t know is that working as a tech (or edtech) exec, whether on staff or as a consultant, has been my second career.

So after 30 years I’m returning to my first career: journalism and other writing, with consulting now as the side project.

In late 1987, I left a career in journalism (primarily in radio news, but also some TV and print) and as a budding writer of science fiction to become an early marketing manager for the Apple Programmer’s and Developer’s Association. That was when you still had to educate people about what a “personal computer” was before enticing them to buy one. For a journalist who had won Computer Press Association awards for a radio talk show (yes) about computing, working for APDA and its parent A.P.P.L.E. Co-op was a natural fit.

I went on to marketing management at Egghead Discount Software and became a marketing exec at a number of tech companies. My shift to edtech began with a consulting role as interim vice president of marketing for McGraw-Hill Home Interactive. That led to explaining tech’s potential (and limitations) in the education market. I’ve since held marketing executive staff roles at Pearson Education, Professional Examination Service, and SchoolMessenger (West Corporation), plus consulting senior roles with several more firms.

Always, it’s been with the tenets that tech marketing and branding must focus on what’s unique, believable, and true. It ties back to providing information from which a buyer can make a confident decision. If you’re missing any of these three elements, you may not be marketing in the best interests of the company or the customer. You could just be shilling for that fast buck.

Not coincidentally, those three tenets also are related to good journalism, even if the desired outcomes are very different.

Throughout my career as a tech exec and consultant, I’ve kept my hands — at careful arm’s length — in some form of journalism, usually as an analyst or commentator. I wrote the “Byte Me” column for a Seattle-area alternative news weekly for four years. For another four, I did television commentary about tech.

And for the past lucky seven years, I’ve been fortunate enough to be a founding writer for the tech news site GeekWire, contributing columns, podcasts, and news stories as often as my day job would allow. In between all of this, I co-authored a couple of Dummies books, wrote some long essays, and did a lot of public speaking.

However, there were always things I would not write about because of my concerns about perceived or real conflicts of interest. That hampered topics I was willing to take on.

So now it’s time to flip the model.

Starting, well, already earlier this year, I’m returning to journalism, analysis and commentary as my main job. That work encompasses both tech and — more so than I was able to do in the past — edtech.

GeekWire will remain my home base, allowing me to expand the writing I’ve done about edtech, continue my special monthly podcast interview/story series about pop culture, science fiction, and the arts, and begin a new weekly column about the intersection of media and technology when it comes to creating and consuming “content.” I realize this experimental swap of emphasis won’t be all wonderfulness. It’s risky. And I’ll be trading one set of career annoyances for another. Don’t let anyone tell you journalism and fiction writing aren’t businesses, especially if you expect to get paid.

Will I write for others, beyond GeekWire? Yes. There may again be long essays, short fiction, and books.

Will I still consult? As time, interest and ethical considerations allow. But I doubt much consulting will be on standard marketing. That intellectual challenge, for me, is incremental after three decades.

Besides, unlike when I began, no one today has to explain digital technology to consumers or educators to get them interested in using it. More important, and part of my role now, is helping all of us better understand how to intelligently manage tech’s effects on our everyday lives.

Unexpected

Seattle: A hub for both tech & science fiction

Seattle gets a lot of credit for being a hub for the technology industry. But what may not be as obvious to the masses — and is being surfaced by some tech leaders themselves — is that Seattle (and the broader Pacific Northwest) is a hub for science fiction and fantasy too.

And they’re increasingly linked.

I’ve delved a bit into those connections this year as I’ve stepped up my writing for the tech news site GeekWire. Not only do we now in the Northwest have Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, and Bill Gates, but we will always have Frank Herbert, Greg Bear, and Ursula K. LeGuin.

(Personal disclosure: I was once an active science-fiction writer and one-time officer of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. So my perception might be skewed, much like yours would be if someone casually mentioned there are lots of yellow Volkswagen cars on the road, and suddenly that’s all you’re seeing, even though you never noticed them before.)

So far, 2018 has provided several very public examples of the ties between the greater Seattle area, speculative fiction, and sometimes tech titans.

Example one: The late Frank Herbert, best known for the ground-breaking Dune series of novels but also a former Seattle journalist, being honored in his home town of Tacoma with a park.

Example two: Amazon has done a lot to raise the profile of science fiction and fantasy on video with its original productions. (Just think of how well Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle has been transformed into a series for Amazon Prime.)

One big reason may be that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos himself is a fan of the genre and is willing to propel adaptations. The latest? Iain M. Banks’ Culture novel series.

Example three: SFWA’s current president, Cat Rambo, lives in Seattle and is a tireless advocate for writers (especially of short fiction and, lately, of games). One of those writers Cat and SFWA have recently highlighted is Peter S. Beagle, who lived in the Seattle area during the 1980s and has a 2016 novel, Summerlong, set here. Beagle will shortly become a SFWA Grand Master.

Finally, it doesn’t all have to be pure science fiction and fantasy. It can be related nerd culture, such as the long-running television sitcom The Big Bang Theory. And Bill Gates is on it. Really.

The guest appearance probably won’t provide any insight into the science fiction Gates prefers. But earlier, he had expressed an appreciation for the work of Neal Stephenson — who happens to live in the Seattle area, too.

Education, Technology, Unexpected

What’s happened to edtech industry news?

http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/sturgeon-campbell-awards.htm#images
Theodore Sturgeon Award trophy “asks the next question.” (Gunn Center Photo)

I don’t do tweet storms much. But recently, I got riled up about the state of K-12 edtech industry news coverage. Ten tweets resulted.

I don’t regret any of what I wrote rapidly that morning. Except maybe misspelling “motivators” in the very first tweet, a typo I introduced as I tried to make “motivations” fit into Twitter’s 280-character limit and had to come up with another word.

I’ll also point out that EdSurge is doing some good reporting in the K-12 edtech area. What EdSurge writes can be selective and uneven as the edtech news and resource site has expanded its coverage  into higher education and adjacent markets.  Yet some of EdSurge’s best work has come from Managing Editor Tony Wan, who provides context and background, and not just the latest press release.

I also didn’t mention Education Week’s EdWeek Market Brief, which arose as the funding boom did (and seems to be tinged with the patina of a subscription market research service, but isn’t quite that). Still, it’s not edtech-specific, and appears to be a bit of a side project to Education Week’s mainstay good work in covering education as a whole.

That leads to one final postscript observation: Perhaps there just isn’t enough, in these days of click-bait and cut-back journalism, of what science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once simply called, “Ask the next question.” He was describing it in terms of good speculation and debate. It’s also a hallmark of good journalism.

Education, Technology, Unexpected

Of Pittsburgh, edtech, and science fiction

Duolingo’s Pittsburgh headquarters. (Duolingo photo)

February is coming to an end. And with it, a rather unique initiative of GeekWire’s.

Back when Amazon announced it was accepting proposals from cities to be the location of that company’s “HQ2,” GeekWire’s founders were inspired (admittedly, during a happy hour).

If Amazon can solicit bids for an HQ2, they thought, why not GeekWire?  And thus was born the GeekWire HQ2 project.

GeekWire would only locate a co-headquarters in the winning city for a month, and just bring a handful of transplanted jobs (the RFP stated “up to three”).

Yet several cities responded, and Pittsburgh won.

Even though I didn’t travel to Pittsburgh, I did contribute. I happened to know that Pittsburgh is a hub of education technology activity, and developed a detailed round-up of how edtech is in Pittsburgh’s DNA — going back to Fred Rogers, when “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was airing on the edtech of its era (television).

My contributions took a different tack as the month progressed. Turns out Pittsburgh also is a hub for science-fiction activity — at least in 2017 and 2018. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is presenting its Nebula Awards in Pittsburgh again this May, as the Nebula Conference completes a two-year location rotation.


Plus, this year’s SFWA Grand Master, being honored for a lifetime of achievement, has roots in both Pittsburgh and Seattle. So I highlighted the career of author Peter S. Beagle (best known for the novel The Last Unicorn, but writer of so much more, including a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, film adaptations, and many other books) in the context of SFWA and the two cities.

Catch up on all of GeekWire HQ2 special coverage here. And, if you’re wondering what else I’ve been writing lately, my GeekWire author archive is here. (Spoiler alert: there’s edtech, science fiction, pop culture and a fascinating podcast with author and futurist Ramez Naam.)

Technology

Most memorable geek writing of 2017, recapped

Recording GeekWire’s “popcast” at Living Computers in Seattle. (GeekWire photo/Clare McGrane)

For those keeping track (and it may just be my close family, when pestered), my fondest writing work was about the intersection of tech, the arts, and pop culture in 2017. And it was all for GeekWire.

Much of it wasn’t timely “news,” per se, though some of the underlying interviews that I did for a special GeekWire podcast series beginning in August did spawn news stories.  There were some non-“popcast” articles that were also popular, including a re-cap and re-think of education technology funding (and its “edtech” industry label) at year’s end, plus a candid re-assessment of my ability to forecast tech’s future.

Other highlights? I’ll let my threaded Twitter avatar speak for me. (Because 2017.)

Technology, Unexpected

Seattle Symphony: Stepping boldly (& carefully) into digital

 

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets rehearsal. (Seattle Symphony photo)

How do you bring a venerated arts organization into the digital world? Often in non-public-facing ways. And with the support of audiences and leadership.

The Seattle Symphony is considered one of the top orchestras for doing “multi-sensory” performances — everything from accompanying films live, on-stage, to playing alongside “kinetic instruments” while the conductor uses a Microsoft Kinect.

I take a look behind the scenes at both (including what happened during a rehearsal for a live orchestra-enhanced performance of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) in both my podcast and related article for GeekWire.

But a few details about digital risk-taking didn’t make it into the GeekWire story.

Seattle Symphony’s Joe Kaufman and Kelly Woodhouse Boston. (Frank Catalano photo)

One is the role of leadership. Director of Operations Kelly Woodhouse Boston credits Music Director Ludovic Morlot and President and CEO Simon Woods with being, “key to the experimentation we’ve been able to do in the last five or six years,” she says. “Both Ludovic and Simon are very open to new ideas, experimenting, openness, innovation, and they have really set us up so that when their departure occurs we’re in a really strong position to move forward.”

Departure? Yes. Morlot and Woods, who have both been with the Symphony since 2011, are leaving (for different reasons and opportunities).  That means a transition.

Joseph Kaufman, the Symphony’s assistant principal bass, is also optimistic: “They were such strong leaders (and that) has set the tone for us as we search for a new executive director, to find someone who’s going to fit that mold, who’s going to continue that trend.” Woodhouse Boston also notes that Thomas Dausgaard, the incoming music director, “will be continuing that tradition.”

Seattle Symphony post-concert kinetic instruments installation. (Frank Catalano photo)

The acceptance of digital and multi-sensory experiences also relies largely on the audience. Seattle, Woodhouse Boston notes, has audiences that are “sophisticated and adventurous.” It also doesn’t hurt that the greater Seattle area is a technology hub.

Is there anything new that the Symphony hasn’t done, but would like to try? Kaufman would like to go beyond accompanying well-known films, to doing a live score with the premiere of a brand new movie. “I think it could be something that people would clamor to see especially if it was in partnership with the film festival or some other institution,” he says.

To find out more about how the Seattle Symphony earned its reputation for taking risks with technology, both overtly and subtly, read, “From Harry Potter to Star Trek Beyond, behind the scenes with Seattle Symphony’s multi-sensory tech” at GeekWire, or listen to the podcast.

Technology

Tales of mold and disintegration: Saving vintage computers

Sitting in a replica of a 1980s rec room at Living Computers. (GeekWire photo / Clare McGrane)

It’s always a little surreal, and sobering, when you visit a museum and see things you’ve owned and used.

But that’s exactly the experience I had, and other nerds are likely to have, when visiting Living Computers: Museum + Labs in Seattle. I also learned a lesson about how one’s formal education may not lead in a straight line to a career, yet still be totally applicable.

This two-floor museum tucked next to Starbucks’ headquarters in the SODO neighborhood is said to be the only museum in the world dedicated to collecting and operating historically significant computers. That includes everything from IBM 360 mainframes (which, as a junior high student, I learned to program using punch cards), to “microcomputers” like the Apple II (my first serious writing machine, after a Smith Corona Electra 120 typewriter).

And all of them work.

An original Apple 1, case not included. (GeekWire photo / Clare McGrane)

There is also a full level of contemporary-tech displays on the main floor. I toured all of it, microphone in hand, alongside Executive Director Lath Carlson for an episode of my GeekWire podcast on the arts and popular culture. It also led to two articles, one on the back stories of some of the vintage computers, and a second on how Living Computers determines what’s a “trend” for the main floor tech exhibits.

An Apple II disk coaster, still fulfilling its original function, in my home office.

One detail I couldn’t help asking about was Carlson’s degree in cultural anthropology. He said he picked that major after considering mechanical engineering. How does that align with running a computer museum?

“I chose anthropology because really what I realized I was interested in was how people use tools,” Carlson told me. “And computers are the most universal tool that’s ever been created.”

Observing visitors’ reactions is an outcome of that.  “I think what’s so special about this museum is the kind of inter-generational exchanges that happen,” he explained “So we’ll have a grandparent or a parent and their kids come or all three come as a unit to the museum, and get this incredible experience of,  ‘Oh, that’s what my dad did all those years when he went to work,’ or, ‘That’s what my mom did when she went in to work at the data center’… And that happens almost daily and I think it’s fantastic to see that in this environment.”

Read, and hear, more at GeekWire: “How this museum makes moldy machines work again, saving historic computers for the future,” “Tech fad or real trend? Seattle’s Living Computers Museum + Labs places bets in newest exhibits,” or the full half-hour podcast here.

Technology

Held accountable… for my tech predictions

When dinosaurs ruled the internet. (Wikimedia Commons image / public domain)

It can very much suck to go out on a limb. Especially if that limb is attached to the fast-growing tree of technology.

Twenty-five years ago, I wrote an essay about the future of the news media and technology. The long version appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact (for what was Analog‘s regular non-fiction ‘State of the Art’ feature) as “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Airwaves.” The short version — punchy with predictions — showed up in the Seattle Times on Wednesday, October 7, 1992.

Turns out a lot can change in 25 years.

A smarter person would have cashed the checks and moved on to the next “here’s what the future will be like” project, never glancing back. A smarter person would have made sure his future self never found the original essay online (there was no “on the web” in 1992, at least not the way we think of it). A smarter person is not me.

So, my 2017 future self has critiqued my 1992 futurist self in an essay for GeekWire. It reprints the substance of the entire original Seattle Times essay (except the opening paragraph) and, more importantly, evaluates how I did.

On balance? Not bad. But there were two major misses, having to do with the internet as we know it, and with rumors as we fear them.

Two of these things are not like the others. (GeekWire image / Todd Bishop)

Keep in mind that, in 1992, I was relatively new to tech (2017 marks my 30th anniversary in the tech industry full-time). That was in the era of “personal computers.” But I also had more than a dozen years experience in broadcasting, including work for KING Seattle and NBC Radio. Plus I was actively writing science fiction.

As a result, I thought I had as good a shot as anyone of getting it right. And, I didn’t. Because the wild card in prediction is always a new development that cross-pollinates with another new development to create something unexpected in combination. Like the internet + smartphones, as one example.

Some things still hold up well, such as my introductory Seattle Times paragraph:

It is the end of the Mediazoic Era. The information-spawned creatures feel it in the air as they lumber across the Electromagnetic Plain, feet leaving newsprint images, bodies trailing audio tape. In large part, the demise of the Networkasaurus is due to the very developments that gave it great strength: satellites, computers, and cable television.

And the closing paragraph of the longer Analog version:

There won’t be a lack of information or tight-fisted high priests who control access to it (as was the case in the Dark Ages). Rather, there will be the ability to choose both sources and “editors” of those sources. But this won’t come until we get through the growing proliferation of news sources and gatherers, the resulting confusion, the end of news network and wire service dominance, the development of smart filters, and the accompanying readjustment of social equilibrium.

I’m still waiting for that “accompanying readjustment.”

Do read, “25 years ago, I predicted the future of media and tech — here’s how I did,” at GeekWire.

Technology, Unexpected

Public media’s digital transition & future

I’ve often thought that digital technology is one of the best things that has ever happened to radio … and one of the worst.

NPR’s DC HQ.

It dramatically increases radio’s global reach (in a way mailed cassette tapes of “airchecks” never did) and the ability to consume its audio in bite-size chunks, such as in podcasts. Yet it provides an existential threat to terrestrial broadcasters who assume radio waves, not audio content, is what sets them apart.

Both extremes of thought are well known in public radio. And discussed in the latest interview in my special GeekWire series of podcasts and articles about the arts, popular culture and science fiction. This time, I speak with representatives of two Seattle-area public radio stations, Matt Martinez from jazz/news/blues format KNKX, and Bryan Lowe of classical format KING-FM.

Martinez has an additional perspective, having come to Seattle two years ago after 15 years with NPR. It was while on a vacation visit to NPR studios in DC in September that I got the idea for this podcast, seeing the floors of studios, the two-level newsroom, and even the glassed-in control center for program distribution (with an odd, unexplained egg-shaped chair in the center — sadly, no photos).

Lowe from KING-FM and Martinez of KNKX. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

The conversation with Martinez and Lowe was fascinating, and the podcast goes far beyond what’s in the summarized GeekWire story. We also delve into tech fads vs. trends for public radio, how radio content gets from their studios to your (non-radio) devices, and even some backstory about The Bryant Park Project, an NPR morning show initiative that Martinez worked on a decade ago and was, in the telling, a bit ahead of its digital time.

My NPR vacation souvenir.

And for those who don’t know, the “aircheck” I mentioned earlier was a tape that radio personalities used to make either for critique sessions with management or to look for work at other stations. Yeah. I spent a dozen years on the air, for a brief time as a disc jockey and then, for much longer, in news as an anchor/reporter and also a news director.

Never in public radio, though. I was once offered the news director position at public KUOW Seattle after what I thought was a disastrous group interview with news department staff.  (Them: “What makes you think you, as a commercial newscaster, could handle public broadcasting?” Me: “It worked for Daniel Schorr, didn’t it?”) The interview had gone so badly, in my mind, that I’d already taken my first position in tech before the KUOW offer was made. Not only did I wind up leaving radio behind, I discovered I wasn’t always a great judge of how I did in interviews.

Off-air musings aside, check out the GeekWire story, “Public radio’s digital moment: Smartphones, streaming, and the future of listening.” And listen to the 43-minute podcast, too. It’s got some great voices.

Strategic advice, analysis & insight