Lou's Commentary

The Walters Museum in Baltimore and a Gentle Reminder about Progress

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

What to do when there are piles of files, albeit organized, on all corners of your desk and your email in box has 200 messages to be read? Take a couple hours and go clear your head. The Walters Museum in Baltimore beckoned me and two friends this Saturday afternoon.

First, who was Walters? There were two…father and son. Father was a self-made millionaire who scored his fortune in wholesale liquor and the railraod. Son was a faithful sidekick who was equally successful. They spent all their money on art and antiquities and when their collection got too big, they built themselves a museum. And a very interesting one at that.

The reason for this post, however, is not to talk about Walters or their museum. No, out of four floors on two buildings, one small cubby that housed an exhibit about communication stuck with me. The graphic was prepared for school children, but often the simpler the presentation, the more profound the message.

 There was a timeline that read as follows:

Hieroglyphics 3000BC     Pictograms 3500BC     Alphabet 1700BC     Parchment 200BC     Paper 105AD

Books 400AD     Printing 1455AD     Digital 20th century

A gentle reminder that you can’t stop progress. The difference between today and the last 4000 years is that it is transpiring at a much faster pace. A question we are asked frequently and that I pose to you is:

How do you respond to and manage change in your publishing operation? I believe this is a fundamental issue that separates the boys from the men.

Privacy: Friend or Foe?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Today’s Washington Post, August 11, 2009, pages A2 and A3 [yes, I read the print version], gave pause to the topic of privacy. Much of our work with clients is about strategy, business models, tactics, creating, measuring impact, making and keeping readers, visitors, and customers happy to meet missions and make money. Rarely do conversations focus on privacy.

Few would question the impact that social networking [and tracking technologies] have made with how we communicate.  And guess what? With today’s announcement that Facebook purchased Friend Feed, if you are so inclined, your friends can track what you are doing on social media sites. The Post also reports that the Obama’s aides view social networking as good for you and me…something about transparency…and good for government. [George Orwell is flipping in his grave on this one.] And the government’s information czar indicates that as long as we can “opt out” on government sites, it’s not a big deal.

Here comes the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Democracy and Technology, among others, to protect U.S. citizens.

Congress has fiddled with this topic recently, but nothing major to report yet. 
Take heed, privacy policy is going to become increasingly important to content creators and consumers from a personal and a business perspective.