Consumer electronics manufacturers oppose Canvas

Why would a consumer electronics manufacture, like Sony, oppose the joint BBC, ITV and BT venture?

Heard of Blu-ray? It’s the DVD standard for high definition videos. It was developed by Sony. There were a few other standards that contended but, eventually they fell by the wayside as consumer caution and confusion held sales of new DVD players back. The manufactures agreed to adopt a single standard. Simpler for everyone.

So you may think everyone is a winner! But as they might have said in “Animal Farm”, some are bigger winners than others

Sony own the technology so every time a Hollywood film studio or anyone else produces a Blu-ray DVD they pay Sony a licence fee. Small it may be but with increasing volumes it ends up being significant. Sony also get a licence fee everytime a manufacturer makes a new DVD player with the Blu-ray technology in it. Again another revenue stream. Sony clearly don’t pay themselves when they make a DVD player so they have a commercial advantage over their competition.

You might say it makes sense and they developed the technology so why should they not reap the rewards. I’d have to agree.

Now think of the Internet or World Wide Web. Who owns that? No one it is an amalgamation of networks (each owned by a seprate company) and computers (each made by a wide variety of manufactures) and a vast aray of information and service provider. It is seen (by some) as the next evolution of humanity, globalising the world and empowering the people.

Who invented it? Well it was a cooperation of non-profit making organisations, The US army and universities principally. It was also help by IBM that didn’t think coordinated the development of the Personal Computer but didn’t think it was a big market so didn’t protect their investment.

ITV is a profit making (or would like to be) company, as is BT, but the BBC is not. What they want to develop in Project Canvas is an open architecture way to deliver high quality video over the internet. Their motives? ITV needs to replace (or at least bolster) its broken ad funded broadcast business model. BT know that video over the internet is coming and a) wants to reduce the cost (or get some more money) of delivering it and the BBC (God bless their cotton socks) have as part of their reson detra , “access”.

The internet improves access from a number of view points. Not only does it extend beyond the traditional limitations of broadcasting, it caters for individual choice, on demand and catch-up services.

If the device in the home can be a PC, Mac or generic set top box then consumers will not have to go out and buy a new box (the end of the world is nigh). Undoubtedly Sony and other manufactures have their own proprietary solution and that is why they are calling foul.

With the exception of the big boys that have done the R&D and have the global presence to impose a standard I think that any other manufacturer should be looking at this as an opportunity. If suddenly I can download stuff (and lots of it) I have two problems; where do a store it (these are not small files) and how do I manage it (what is it, where is it, can I watch it now, how do I get it from my PC to my TV etc etc etc).

The other thing is, no one predicted SMS messaging as a major revenue source for mobile, it was cheap and easy, and look how the consumers took to it. The Internet is the same, no one predicted its commercial and global impact at the start (except me – I wish) and look how people were able to make it (despite its faults) into something so powerful that governments (of all shades) are afraid of it. I’m not suggesting that Project Canvas has the same potential, but who knows if it is cheap and accesable

If Sony come up with something better, even if it is more expensive people will still buy it, if it delivers “value”. I drive a car and it is more expensive than public transport, but it has other values beyond taking me form a-to-b, that makes it worth it to me.

General Hospitals

The organisations that we put in place to manage or deliver an objective go through a constant cycle of being swept away for “new” or “modern” way of doing something only for that “new” and modern way to be eventually be swept away too. Eventually (it seems) an old structure will be reinvented as “new” and sweep all that has gone before.

My observations are: -
No matter how good a organisations structure or the processes eventually they fail to some extent. This maybe they stop delivering the objective, they fail to adopt and adapt, they become inefficient. However this is not the main reason they get swept away. The main reason is that new person comes in and changes things. I’ve done this myself when I took over an organisation.

There are a variety of reasons for sweeping away the old.

• To align to new objectives
• To change a culture
• To drive out inefficiencies, often adopt different (maybe new) technologies or processes.
• To put into place something the instigator understands, make a name, avoid delivering by blaming the change or any other number of completely irrelevant purposes.

Usually evolution, rather than revolution, delivers the best results. Changing one or two things letting them bed in. Dealing with the unanticipated impacts before the next change. This can be a luxury though, as occasionally a system is left in place for so long and become so corrupt from its original intent that time, money or some other finite resource has run out.

Two thing got me thinking about this: -

• One was the suggestion that GP centres and local health centres took on more of the general medical duties of hospitals to allow the Hospitals to become specialist centres of expertise where high cost technology could concentrated. This reminded me of the old “General Hospital” and Cottage Hospital network which was shut down to move nurses and doctors into regional hospitals.

• The second was the suggestion that some of the stations shut down by Dr Beaching in the 1070’s should be reopened to cope with the increasing demand for rail travel

I wonder how long it will be before it is suggested that the mines be reopened.
It seem that what is relatively short term benefits are realised instead of sustainable progress.

Prince gets rogered

Prince Charles has voiced his opinion over a building in Chelsea (on the Old Chelsea Barracks site) and now the Architect (Lord Rogers) is asking for a constitutional review.

What is wrong here? That fact that Prince Charles voiced an opinion! Surly he has the right to express an opinion. What is wrong is if the Qatari owners have canned the building just because the opinion came from Prince Charles. Apparently most of the local residence objected to the building as being out of character with the surroundings too.

Rogers said on the BBC Radio 4 that he had a letter from the Royal Hospital (Chelsea Pensioners Hospital) stating that they didn’t object. Clearly Lord Rogers values the Royal Hospitals opinion over local residence. As he seems free to give different weight depending on the source of the opionin why does he object if the Qatari owners do likewise.

If this out of touch architect thinks we need a constitutional review because of this, it really demonstrates how the elite of the UK are full of their own self importance. Why is he not calling for a constitutional review of how the police are able to use anti terrorist laws to curb the justified actions of UK citizens. Why is he not calling for the prosecution of fraudulent MPs.

Get you head out of your arse Rogers and smell the real shit that is wrong with the country.

ChildLine Rock 2

On Monday 2 June I got a last minute invite to ChildLine Rock2 at the IndegO2 arena in London. The line up was :-

• The Pretty Things
• Jon Lord (Deep Purple)
• Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple)
• Steve Harley
• Thunder
• Uriah Heep
• Sons Of Albion
• Hot Leg
• Steve Balsamo

It wasn't a sell out but was still more than full enough to give a great atmosphere. The arena is an ideal size to give an intimate feeling between audience and artist. Plus the acoustics are great. Over the three and a half hours (scheduled to be 3) 9 acts put a show on for ChildLine.

I wouldn’t normally do this but I can’t see much publicity to sell the album and hopefully this may generate some money for ChildLine…

The event (minus the “Sons Of Albion”) can be downloaded here Disc 1 and Disc 2
Please give even just a couple of quid to support ChildLine by clicking here.

Sugar Rush Culture

I’ve worked in the telecoms industry in the UK for over 37-years and I’ve observed is several cultural changes. Post Office Telecommunications was the monopoly corporate national UK provider, that become British Telecom the newly privatised corporation having to deal with competition and regulation to the BT we have today in a relatively, free and open market.

I wouldn’t like to say which cultural era was best however, the current culture that started to take hold in 2006/7 I think spells a dark period that may eventually see BT disappear.

A bit of history, from my perspective...

In the beginning the public corporation knew what was best for you. Everyone needed a functional telephone and it was Black or Ivor. These, along with all telecoms equipment, was tested and tested to be as near perfect (functionally) as possible. They were put out to field trials for up to 5-years before being launched on the general public. They worked and they worked well, but there was no choice. I once asked why they didn’t offer a “Mickey Mouse” phone? I’d seen one similar to the photo and loved the integration on form and function.

The answer? “The telephones we provide do not need gimmicks, they work and they last longer than this plastic rubbish and most of our customers don’t want them anyway”. Nicely pompous, with a dash of arrogance and a denial of what might be. Six years later the phone above was available.

In the run up to privatisation things started to liberalise at the time these seemed like great strides, in hind sight they seem trivial. As an example the TRIM phone

This hadn’t gone through the lengthy testing and field trials and had two major problems. One, it was so light that you couldn’t turn the dial without holding the base unit to prevent it spinning around and taking off across the room. Secondly the illuminated dial was radioactive. A push button version soon emerged. Speed had replaced testing, testing, testing.

The culture, which this is really about, had started to change. There were still rules and processes that had evolved through the civil service and were the core of culture. Rules such as; if you were promoted you had to change departments. This stopped a number of potential bad practices (rife today) and moved people and their knowledge around the business. I have to say benefitting both in the long term. Some things were bad if you asked “why do we do X?” the answer would often be “because we have always done it this way.”

Once privatised BT had to change the culture and the biggest obstacle was the managers and staff that had spent a lifetime in the organisation. So, bravely, BT offered a very generous voluntary leaver package which resulted in a mass exodus of this obstruction to cultural change. The result… It was a company with Alzheimer’s. Nobody left seems to know why or were we had done stuff and a lot of time was spent relearning and reinventing. However, with reinforcement from training initiatives such as “Get it right first time”, “Putting the customer first” and “Total Quality Management” the culture changed from “we know best and we’ll do it in our own time” to become “if it seems reasonable well do it for you and as quickly as we can.”

The change allowed visionaries to be heard, to see the possibilities and to get teams behind them. Competition hadn’t really kicked in and there was less focus on making money (even so BT did make lots of money). I’d also have to say business was still largely a voice service with small amounts of data and even smaller amounts of media on very specialist infrastructure.

The company still had staff canteens. These provided informal knowledge sharing. A mix of managers, operations, sales and commercial staff reinforced communications and team identity.

Canteen closure and the wholesale introduction of home working enable the better utilisation and rationalisation of buildings but the short term easily identifiable financial gain has had a long term less measurable cultural impact.

Mobile phone, the Internet, digitisation and convergence opened up telecoms to more competition. Smaller, more responsive and focused on specific (often high value) market segments resulted in a panicking. Outsiders, apparently visionaries that understood the technology and the way the market would develop were brought in. They unfortunately turned out to be simply riding the wave all the way to the dot.com bubble burst. Everyone at the top seemed to get swept along and confused visionary with story teller. The bigger the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow the more believable the story. Make even a slightly cautionary comment and “you’re being negative”. Make a robust case against doing something and you’re dismisses as one of those poor unfortunate people that “just don’t get it”.

In the last few years it has become a macho culture (I don’t just mean male). Who can shout the loudest, who claims “I did this” when it all went right but seems strangely absent when it all goes wrong. Now culture is to get the next “big win”. Almost like a sugar rush or drug induced high the company looks for the next £200m deal rather that a regular stream of lower value, often higher margin deals.

The story for these £200m deals predicts a future. Targets are set appropriately, forecasts are made and NO ONE DOES DETAIL. So you get… example … To meet the revenue forecast and profitability we need to have just ten national customers on board. This is an ideal service for any rail network operator.

Small boy; “But there aren’t 10 national rail network operators in the UK.”

Apprentice hopeful; “I don’t want to hear that negative talk.”

One month later

Apprentice hopeful: “So where are our ten leads?” I need some honesty here if we are not up for the job we should say so now”

Small boy; “But there aren’t 10 national rail network operators in the UK.”

Apprentice hopeful: “Don’t let me catch you saying that again”

Small boy: “But I though you wanted some honesty”

Apprentice hopeful: “You’re fired..”

If you reward flamboyant risk taking who become the “I travel business class” elite you really shouldn’t be surprised if others jump on the band wagon. Some of those old civil service rules where babies that went with the bathwater.

As the good people leave under this crushing culture those left are a mix of people that:-

· Have been there so long they have become institutionalised and will never leave.

· Would get found out for talking bollocks in a heart beat

· Are unemployable in the real world

· Come from finance where numbers are the on truth and “they get it”

I believe that BT faces as big a cultural challenge as when it was first privatised. The difference is that then the need was obvious and now the need hides behind spreadsheets and management speak.