Texas State Telephone Coop keynote : "He gave everyone a lot to think about"
A newsletter is now up on the site with a short report about my keynote in Tahoe last month for this group. [ link ] Here's what it had to say:
"The sessions started up early the next morning. The first speaker was futurist Jim Carroll, who discussed Innovation and Strategies for the Future of Rural Telcos. He gave everyone a lot to think about with a number of insights into our generation, the next generation and innovation. Read more...
He pointed out that the attendees were part of the only generation not to grow up with computers at birth, but to have to deal with them. He discussed the fact that our faith in the future has been shaken by the challenges we have experienced in the telecom industry. We’re no longer excited about developments like distance education and telemedicine. It’s difficult to have the courage to go forward in today’s business climate.
This has led to new business realities:' Aggressive indecision – it’s easier not to make any decisions than to worry about making the wrong one; ' Shorter payback expectations and short lead times to alleviate the risk ; ' Rapid product evolution (like Wi-Fi); ' Hyperinnovation (shorter product life cycles)
All of this has led to a corporate innovation gap. People are no longer willing to stick their necks out with innovative ideas. Carroll emphasized that it’s important to bring back the courage to innovate and think strategically about our companies and communities. The telcos are the folks defining the future of the community by virtue of the infrastructure they put into place. They need to be innovative to provide the best opportunities for our kids and for our community economic development. He noted, “Communities that don’t solve
the broadband divide will find increasingly negative implications.”
He suggested the following steps:
#1 Manage Your Attitude, #2 Accept Inevitability, #3 Anticipate – don’t react, #4 Experiment (again), #5 Take risks (step outside your comfort zone and plan to make a reasonable number of mistakes), #6 Restore your courage, #7 Take it one step at a time, #8 Innovate, #9 Make do and #10 “Just do it.”
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Road test - 16 hr laptop device!
I've got a 5 1/2 hr flight to San Francisco today and lots of work today. My old IBM Thinkpad battery is toast -- and I don't want to invest the $200+ to buy a new one, given that I'll trash this laptop soon.
So I've arranged, courtesy of a friend, to try out the Electrovay PowerPad 160 -- a slim, 1 1/2 lb flat lithium-battery device that promises me 16hrs of juice. It should prove interesting -- heck, I'll even have power left over to watch a DVD once my work is done.
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This week - a closing keynote for the Global Payroll Management Conference
I'm the closing speaker for the American Payroll/Canadian Payroll Assn sponsored conference in San Francisco. From the session description: "In this era of global business, new business models, hyper-connectivity, rapidly transformed business practices, and constant business restructuring, payroll professionals have learned that change is constant. In this dynamic closing keynote, futurist Jim Carroll takes us on a tour of the issues that surround our attitudes toward technology and our methods of dealing with change. He outlines why it is critical that we put ourselves in a frame of mind in which we can excel - not rebel - in our approach to the future." [ link ]
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Investors Business Digest agrees with me
In a client proposal back in June, I wrote that in the world of business information technology, "the money will be in the implementation – companies will continue to be reluctant to invest in new technology, but will come to realize that there is an ROI that comes from an investment in making work better what they already have"
Investors Business Daily, today: "So what is the next big thing? Pundits and analysts have been searching for that since the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. Some think it's already here, but it's gone largely unnoticed because it's not a hot new technology as the PC or Internet was. They're talking about ways to make computing more useful and less expensive to manage. It may sound mundane compared with earlier developments, but analysts think it's much more complicated than designing a faster computer chip or storing more data on a disk drive. And much more important."
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What I did in the power blackout?
I was, uh, poolside, plugged in with my laptop and blackberry, on the tail end of a visit to the Southwest. Read about it in the GlobeTechnology site. Hmmm .... sorta makes me sound like a dwit? But the point I was trying to stress is despite the fact much of the Northeast was in the dark, countless number of web servers in the Northeast stayed up, which I think is a remarkable testament. [ link ]
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Comments on my keynote to the Texas Statewide Telephone Cooperative, Inc.
Just received this message from the meeting planner who brought me in for a talk on the future of the telecom industry ....
"Thanks again for coming all of the way out to Lake Tahoe to share your insights with the TSTCI group at their Futures Retreat. Your presentation was rated very highly on the Speaker Evaluation section of the evaluation form. There was also a great comment I thought you would like that someone added:
"At first I thought Jim Carroll's talk a little generic but began to realize it had the most effect."
I thought of you yesterday when I was in the supermarket and saw an upside down bottle of salad dressing."
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Keynote for the Dynamic Meetings conference, San Antonio/Houston
I'll be the opening keynote speaker, for this event which is "an educational experience to empower the professional meeting planner to launch their entire meeting preparation process to the next level." San Antonio, TX, Sept. 19 and Houston, Sept. 26. Details at the Dynamic Meetings site. [ site ]
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Should the Internet be used in a courtroom?
My August CAMagazine article is about the issue of whether the Internet should -- and could -- be used as an evidentiary tool in court. This is a significant trend and will become a major issue through the next decade.
Read the Adobe Acrobat version [ 
article ]
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"Time for a CRM tune-up"
The article issue of Contact magazine features my article about why so many customer relationship management projects fail: -- "By and large, those who got involved with CRM approached it as a technology project, not as a key business strategy .... technology is a very small part of the equation, CRM is really about a significant change to the corporate culture."
Read the Adobe Acrobat version [ article ]
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Innovation stagnation?
In preparing an outline for a talk to a group of PR professionals, I'm still thinking about what is really going on out there in corporate America. I caught some of my thoughts in my "aggressive indecision" article a few weeks back -- but this morning, woke up with the phrase "innovation stagnation" in my head. I still think there are too many organizations who are complacent, spinning their wheels, not only unable to make decisions, but not even of a mindset that it is important to continue to try to move forward .....
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