At the ICF Global Summit in New York this past week – listening to the stories from the world’s top 7 ‘Intelligent Communities’, your correspondent found that enthusiasms were not entirely dampened by New York’s inclement weather.
The full story ‘Shaken and Stirred’ describes a common factor in each of the case studies from these pioneering communities – they first started on their journeys by understanding where they were coming from and the perils of standing still.
Diligent readers may have noticed the silence from this quarter – an unexplained lapse in my efforts to find some gentle humour amongst the stern earnestness of broadband politics and campaigns for regulatory reform.
It is not, I am pleased to report, that comedic prospects have finally run dry. Benoît Felten’s recent reference to Australian TV’s satirical talent applied to the NBN’s opposition shows that this is evidently not so – even though he despairs at the contrasting lack of creative criticism amongst European TV shows.
In the UK we would need to go back a very long time indeed to find satirists tackling the strangeness of the digital economy – back in fact to the days of Spitting Image. Their writing team, scattered as they were in 1984 across the UK, were amongst the early beneficiaries of what was then a curious development – later to be known as email.
This system (the pre-privatized BT’s Telecom Gold) predated the Internet Protocol, did not require PC’s or smart devices and exploited the emergent X25 packet-switched services. With some rubber cups to capture the telephonic squeaks and whistles for conversion into data travelling at 0.0024 Mb/s, the scripts for those wonderful programmes could be compiled in 3 days – leaving enough time for the puppeteers to perfect their art
Their tribute to this astounding innovation – and alas I do not know of an archive copy – was in the form of a spoof Wagnerian opera complete with a puppet prima donna (with horned helmet) and chorus signing the aria ‘We’ve got an RS232 interface lead’ – the vital connector between screen and modem. I guess not many viewers understood the reference.
We so often hear that TV comedy is not what it used to be. Perhaps commissioning editors at the BBC could take note of the efforts down under and apply some creative talent to today’s broadband nonsense in the style of the Guardian’s Ripped off Britons.
But I digress. The real reason for recent radio silence (and a sense of calm philosophical rumination) is that I have taken time out to drift around in a fine sailboat amongst Ionian Islands. Normally this would be a great excuse for being entirely cut-off but it seems that every taverna – even in the most unlikely of places – now boasts WiFi.
So, feeling slightly guilty at enjoying the sunshine and deep blues seas, this missive comes to you from Porto Spilia near Spartakhori on the island of Meganisi – and while austere England shivers I will stay awhile basking in the Greek sunshine checking from time to time if anyone is still listening.
‘Normal’ service might be resumed on my return – if I can still find anything to raise the spirits back home. Meanwhile, for readers in Scotland, don’t forget that the Digital Scotland conference and exhibition with be held in Edinburgh on May 22.
For the first time in 10 years the FTTH Council Europe annual summit arrived in the UK.
I was only able to attend on the first day and a half but my observations are around the growing gulf between between economies who chose to be fully part of the global digital economy and those who merely aspire to ‘get by’.
The full story is at the main Groupe Intellex archive site here.
For our 2013 edition we have changed the design – starting with an Open Call for entries, suggestions and ideas.
The Challenge will this year honour and celebrate the enablers of your own digital economy.
We are also this year introducing a separate ‘smart city’ track for international exemplars.
The full details and how to throw in your suggestions can be found here.
Nominate Now and track how your contenders fare during the short-list selection, finalist places and the winners at the NextGen13 conference dinner on 14th October.
The Digital Challenge is a Groupe Intellex project in association with NG Events Ltd.
A new study jointly commissioned by INTUG (the international user group for major telecoms customers) and ECTA (European Competitive Telecoms Association) estimates that the value of a single digital market in the EU for digital communications services as €90 billion.
The need for regulators to address the issues of easier cross-border service provision to enable efficiencies for major businesses has become a significant challenge as the digital economy develops.
Major businesses may represent only 2% of all EU companies but these multi-site, multinational organisations generate 60 million jobs and account for nearly half of EU business turnover and more than half of ‘value added’.
Together with public service agencies, businesses contribute disproportionally to the revenues of major telcos and, in their remit for protecting the interests of all customers, regulators should be mindful of the market distortions that flow from this ‘indirect taxation’.
You can find the full story and a link to the INTUG-ECTA study at Bdaily – the UK’s business news network.
Yesterday’s demise of the UK’s Blockbuster video store, coming so soon after the reins of HMV were handed to ‘the administrator’ and Jessop’s cameras followed Comet’s white goods and countless card shops into the wilderness, has kept headline and leader writers busy and caused ‘a nation of shopkeepers’ to pause for thought.
It was, said one columnist (overstating for effect), as if the High Street had finally run out of people who were not on the Internet. We might even see the end of that most unlikely quack health treatment – retail therapy. The outpouring of late love for lost brands stands in contrast to the reluctance of shoppers to visit the places before they died – and a good part of that must reflect the lack of money to splurge on optional extras when they can be found more conveniently and cheaper elsewhere. Economists may describe this as ‘market pruning’ but hopes for a resurgence of growth in the Spring seem unlikely.
No amount of yearning for the real or imagined lost paradise of the High Street will slow the world sufficiently for those who want to get off but there is value to be found in this massive penny-dropping moment – the realisation that the digital economy is real. Personal and collective moments of revelation such as this tell us how much we have been kidding ourselves as we cling to the ‘established order’.
In the UK the retail sector employs 4 million people and whilst feeling for those whose lives careers and incomes have been disrupted, our editorial ‘Pennies, Drops and Impacts‘ looks at the urgent need to get all our heads around the new realities and deliver a digitally inclusive and more-equitable society.
This edition of the index shows that our published output may have been lower in the 2nd half of the year but we developed some digital economy themes in greater depth.
The Index provides quick links to all of our editorial material (including contributions from Marit Hendriks and Andrew Macdonald and Leader columns for the CMA) plus briefing notes for projects for NG Events and Community Study Tours.
Surprisingly popular in the last week of the year was a review of Irene Ng’s new book ‘Value & Worth’ with a hit–rate exceeding anything we’d published since last September.
For Irene Ng’s new book the title of our review, ‘Make of it what you will’, captures the sense of empowerment that is so evident in the digital economy.
This is an economy where the consumer plays a huge role in how products and services are used to create value. It is an economy where suppliers must rethink their propositions.
In our increasingly digitally-enabled economy it is no longer sufficient for businesses to see sales of a product or service as their sole objective. The value seen by the consumer will be co-created in combination with an array of services and digital devices and further conditioned by the context in which they are being used.
The author does not hide her academic credentials (including a Professorial Chair at Warwick University) but it is her pre-academic business experience that is evident throughout. The challenges of creating and sustaining new markets will be fought in an intensely competitive arena – and one where the platforms for value co-creation are often beyond the influence of second-order supplicants.
Many business leaders will respond to these challenges with innovative creativity and startling success. This week’s report from the GDS shows very clearly that the government is taking a lead. Others may not be so responsive. The world will move on and the disruption to the established order of things will be devastating for those who do not see or fully understand the changes that are already upon us.
This an explorer’s handbook as we venture into the digital unknown.
More at the Sunday Breakfast Book Review
See also our Business Advisory note at Bdaily – the UK business news network
Following a recent flurry of expensive reports claiming insights into aspects of digital infrastructure provision and use, it is time to remind readers of the ‘last law of averages’.
The oft-quoted ‘Law of Averages’ is, of course, a statistical nonsense usually deployed in the cause of ‘advanced wishful thinking’. Our version highlights a darker side. Over-reliance on averaged data means that your understanding of the data will be less than adequate – you might say, ‘below average’!
‘The devil is in the detail’ is a common complaint. With great successes (and failures) hidden under the average blanket, the risks for policy developers are huge – and often followed by ‘unintended consequences’.
Fortunately the digital economy is gradually eliminating the need for the bland summary reports lacking essential insights. It is becoming altogether easier to provide the data packaged with the tools for its exploration and in-depth analysis.
It’s becoming better understood that Cities and Communities who have identified better connectivity as an enabler of economic growth must also pursue a series of programmes designed to exploit the enhanced infrastructure and secure commitments to its future improvement.
In this briefing on Economic Revitalisation, written ahead of NextGen’s 2013 UK events programme, we identify five essential programme strands that together will ensure that the investment in connectivity is worthwhile. At the same time these strands will also inform the local criteria for network design and operation.
The five key strands have emerged from global studies of ‘intelligent communities’ and the UK government’s Open Data and Digital by Default initiatives. They are collectively described as ‘applied’ digital infrastructure.
Groupe Intellex 