Technology Futures

Early bird registration for the 8th Annual Rural Telecommunications Congress Annual Conference is still available through September 10th.

If you live in a rural community and are interested in economic development and broadband issues, this is one of the best conferences going. The RTC conference works hard to keep the sesssions focused on best practice, lessons learned, funding opportunities, and solid, practical information.

If you are interested in funding opportunities and national policy issues, some of the most important Federal and private agencies will be in attendance, with staff and speakers, including the Appalachian Regional Commission, the USDA, NTIA and the Technology Opportunities Program (TOP), and RUPRI.

The conference is being held in Spokane, Washington, with affordable downtown hotel rates, lots to do after hours, and of course, the conference is a tremendous opportunity to meet vendors, network in the hallways, and get valuable information for your community. Disclaimer: I'm on the RTC Board of Directors, but I agreed to join the Board because I was so impressed by the RTC conferences.

I visited two Web sites this morning that illustrate perfectly two problems that I write about frequently:

• The tyranny of IT departments.
• The tyranny of Web design firms

The first site I visited was a well-known educational software publishing house. I wanted to order a typing program for one of my kids. For the second time in the past six weeks, I went through the entire order process, only to have the final "procesing your order" screen sit there and grind away without ever finishing the order. I had tried to place an order back in July with the same results.

I picked up the phone and got a nice salesperson who took my order, but I added another item, and she had to put me on hold because her internal company sales system would not show the item. She first had to look on the Web to establish what the product was, and then had to go ask someone how to enter the missing product into the system. She also admitted that the company knew the Web site did not work; "they are working on it," she told me.

It's almost beyond belief. The Web site ordering process has been broken for at least six weeks? This is pretty simple stuff these days. Even more unbelievable is that the in-house system can't even show all their products, and they probably have less than a hundred total. Here's an idea--give your ordering folks a piece of paper with the product names and numbers on it so they don't have to waste time looking on the Web site for it.

This is tyranny of the IT department in its purest form. Everyone in that department should be fired--they are costing the company untold amounts of revenue while they fiddle around with their software. The only possible explanation is "IT bullies;" the IT folks have completely flummoxed the company with jargon, arcane technical mumbo-jumbo, and IT fiddle-faddle. The IT department is running the company, with disastrous results. The IT department serves the company, not the other way around. Companies do not exist to provide full employment and ever-increasing budgets to the IT staff, but many IT departments have managed to pull this off.

The second site I visited was for a political candidate running for a statewide office. I found a perfect example of tyranny of the Web design company. They had designed a perfectly hideous site that did a wonderful job of showing off all their bandwidth-wasting splash screens, their bag of cute Web tricks, and their complete lack of attention to actual content and ease of navigation. It will probably help them get the next job, but it sure won't help that candidate get elected.

If you are going to spend money on IT and/or a Web site, make sure you get your requirements and needs down on paper (get help with this if you need it), and don't rely entirely on the IT/Web folks to tell you what you need. They often don't take the time to find out. IT and Web designers tend to want to sell solutions--it's much quicker than actually taking the time to find out what it is you do and how IT or the Web can support your core mission. Disclaimer: Design Nine helps you write specifications for IT systems and Web sites so that you get systems that work for affordable costs.

An Indian researcher has discovered that passing a gas over specially designed carbon nanotubes can generate measurable amounts of electricity.

Windpower is a growing industry that is increasingly competitive with coal and oil-generated power. But current windmills have drawbacks, including the noise, potential danger to birds and wildlife, and complex mechanical design.

The carbon nanotubes are solid-state (no moving parts), generate no noise, and would be much less intrusive than windmills. The system is still strictly experimental, but it's another piece of the emerging Energy Economy. One of the most important things to remember about the Energy Economy is that it will create entirely new businesses, and in turn, entirely new kinds of jobs. Is your region ready?

The news is full of stories about USAir's financial woes, which they blame on the airline pilots. Their labor costs are probably too high. But I think there are other contributing factors. I just had to book a flight to Pittsburgh (round trip from Roanoke, Virginia). USAir has a hub there, and direct flights from Roanoke. The other three Roanoke airlines fly you through one of their hubs before getting to Pittsburgh.

You would think USAir would have a natural advantage, since businesspeople don't want to waste time in airports--a nonstop flight is always preferrable to one that requires a stop. Except when the nonstop flight costs two-thirds more! USAir is going broke because they are charging $800 for a single flight segment when all their competitors will fly two legs for under $500. Not only that, the times of the USAir flights are lousy, so I don't really lose that much time with the extra hop.

Another airline got my business, and USAir lost out because of absurd pricing coughed up by hideously complex pricing schemes generated by computer programs that only a bean counter could love. It's obvious that NO human being has ever looked at the Roanoke-Pittsburg pricing and asked, "Does this make sense?" If they had, the prices would be different, and USAir would be making money instead of losing it. Applied over their whole flight network, it's a wonder they have lasted this long. And it explains why the pilots are reluctant to make concessions--why should they if the real problem is not being fixed. Your costs could be zero, but if your prices drive your customers to another airline, it won't make any difference.

In part, this is a natural consequence of the Knowledge Economy. In the old days, travel agents worked mysteriously and invisibly to come up with ticket prices. They had special access to airline fee schedules, and we did not. So we took pricing more or less for granted. We had no information with which to make an informed decision. Today, I can hop onto Orbitz or Expedia and see every price from four or five airlines, and the pricing insanity that USAir calls a "business" is patently obvious.

Welcome to the Knowledge Economy. Information is power, and you need to remind yourself that everyone has a lot of power these days. You can't take customers, business, or economic development for granted anymore.