Rji-chaos

"Business, Technology and the Media: Charting a Course Through Chaos"

Running notes from Bill Densmore from the two-day symposium, "Business, Technology and the Media: Charting a Course Through Chaos," at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, Missouri School of Journalism. There may be some typos in the moment, which we'll go back and correct later so consider this a work in progress! Also, there's a CoverItLive blog stream underway: WATCH LIVE VIDEO STREAM AND LIVE BLOG

This week's event is an initiative of the interdisciplinary Center for the Digital Globe (CDiG), the Alfred Friendly Foundation and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI). It involves about 50 international industry leaders in media, technology and business. The idea is to create new business models and it's organized by Randy Smith, Donald W. Reynolds Chair of Business Journalism. Among participants: Mark VandenBrink, vice president of technology solutions for Samsung America; Beth Polish, senior vice president of Hearst Corporate Innovation; Ochieng Rapuro, managing editor of Kenya^Ys Business Daily newspaper; Jim Kennedy, vice president of strategy for The Associated Press; Vin Capone, development executive for Apple; Beth Keck, senior director for WalMart; Jin-Yong Park, assistant editor for Hankook-Ilbo (The Korea Times)and Phil Aucutt, managing partner for WR Holdings and president of Junit, LLC. (For a full list visit http://www.rjionline.org/cdig )

Samsung executive overviews mobile growth

We're going for two full days on Monday, March 15 and Tuesday, March 16 (2010) here in Columbia, Mo. Getting us started this morning is Mark Vanden Brink, vp of technology solutions for the wireless terminals division of Samsung Telecommunciations America.

Social networking is becoming personal broadcasting, says Vanden Brink. He is sowing charts about the meteoric increase in video treams and viewing time on Facebook among its 400 million users. From August through October 2009, video usage on Facebook shot up 840% in the mobile market -- views via mobile. He calls this an "exaflood" of data on mobile. Mobile data traffic reached one exabyte/month at a rate twice as fast as fixed lines. "We're predicting that by 2013 we'll be in excess of 2 exabytes per month. We're talking the equivalent of 500 million DVDs being transmitted over the mobile data networks."

Trends shaping mobile for the future -- 50 megabits/second and micropayments from washing machines?

You now connect with colleagues via social network. he says more and more people now contact him preferentially through his social networks, rather than via mass communication. Some phones now have 12-megapixel cameras.

The other trend he identifies is "the loss of the medium." In five years, the notion of a cell phone is subsumed by the notion of the activity. "We are right now in the phase of mobile electronics and electronics in general, we talk about nouns and verbs ... what's actually happening is these things are slowly blurring together." Why do you have to have a phone for audio communciation? Vanden Brink, when you can do it over a multi-function device. Your social stream will augment your reality, he says.

Unbiquitous and high-speed connectivity is cited as another trend. He says it is no longer true that other countries are way ahead of the United States on high-speed wireless technology. He says there are 25 U.S. metros that now have so-called "4G" technology available. In his hotel in Columbia, Mo., now he was getting 3.5 megabits per second (Densmore note: That's fairly typical "high-speed" Internet in the United States now). He says 4G technology has a theoretical bandwidth for a download of about 50 megabits per second. He says the opening up of 4G networks for video transmission will free up bandwidth on the current 2G and 3G networks. It will make it possible to embed wireless chips in all kinds of devices -- vending machines, appliances -- "literally every device from dryers, refrigerators," says Samsung's Vanden Brink. "Is there a way to have a recurring revenue stream for a washer or dryer," he asks. "Those are the kind of thinks that are being bandied about by the industry."

Vanden Brink now talks about "pico projectors" which may be everywhere, able to display on walls or tables. He also mentions plastic paper, work making displays flexible. "The big thing to take away is what you look at today -- the idea of the device having a display, that will start to go away, the device will be able to display on other things and use other technologies," says Vanden Brink.