It is easy to write that one has the choice in how they react in the face of a tragedy, but it is humbling and inspirational to see people consciously choosing love when the easy path would be negative or destructive emotions. It took several social media posts from IPTV pioneer Ryan Petty before it sunk in that it was his daughter who had lost her life in the Parkland, Florida shootings. Since then, he has become a tireless advocate for finding common ground on the issues that led to that awful event, but his most profound thoughts may be on the importance of faith and family as the bedrock of a civil society. Continued in the Korner, below.
Raising a Family in the Facebook Era
It was a coup for NCTC that they had Nicholas Thompson as a speaker at the Winter Education Conference last month, as Thompson had just published his expose on how Facebook had been fooled by bad actors and their bots. As good as his presentation on that topic, even more meaningful were his thoughts and concerns about how technology is impacting his family. In a post-presentation interview, he discussed a technique he and other parents are employing to ensure their kids aren’t engulfed in the technology and social media tsunami.
Inspired Questions from the WEC 2018 Regulatory Panel
The measure of success of a conference is often seen in the one or two takeaways or questions that inspire a change when one returns to the office routine. By that yardstick, the Washington update panel, moderated by Matt Polka, president and CEO of the American Cable Association, made NCTC’s WEC 2018 well worth attending.
Rural Broadband PPP Infrastructure Opportunities
In this interview, filmed at NCTC’s Winter Educational Conference, ACA’s Ross Lieberman provides a preview of some of the topics at next week’s ACA Summit, as he talks about barriers to rural broadband and opportunities for various public-private partnerships to speed broadband deployment in hard-to-serve areas.
Alexa Lost Her Voice on Friday and Isn’t Learning as Advertised by Alan Weissberger
[Alan Weissberger tells his Alexa story and puts it in the context of the bigger picture regarding the importance of a robust and secure back-end infrastructure in the following article.] Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa went down on Friday while speaking the wrong error messages to customers. During a ½ hour span Friday morning, I heard the following from Alexa on my Echo device, Amazon Fire Tablet and Fire TV stick…..
The Consumer Experience Show #CES2018
For decades, the acronym CES stood for Consumer Electronics Show. A few years ago, in recognition of its expanded scope, the show organizers changed it from an acronym to simply a word, CES. The meaning of CES continues to evolve and some of the descriptors that might be used to describe CES in 2018 include human, experience and magic.
Electrifying Mobility in Communications, Transport & Smart Cities #CES2018
The “C” in this year’s CES2018 could have easily stood for “cars”, as vehicles from a variety of new entities as well as established players, were seemingly everywhere at CES2018. And it is much more than cars, as the vehicles ranged from personal transport to delivery to shared. The impact of the technologies go beyond mobility and extend to the so-called smart city.
Some Tweets and Short Thoughts:
- RT of @NCTCTweets – “In this post-session interview with
@ViodiTV‘s Ken Pyle,#NCTCWEC returning favorite Meridith Elliott-Powell explains the “clean restroom” theory of customer service, and discusses how operators can differentiate their brands.” - Three words; common sense suggestions. That’s my conclusion based on a quick read of the FCC’s BDAC Report of the removal of State and Local Regulatory Barriers Working Group.
- Well written article by Dave Burstein on FCC Chairman Pai who I have had the good fortune to interview twice. I came away impressed with how approachable Pai is; no handlers, just a real conversation. Even more impressive was that he remembered me after 4 years. There will always be policy issues, but, as a society, we somehow must figure out a way to engage in civil conversation as we strive for common ground.
The Korner: Youth Are Still Our Present
It might be said that I met Ryan Petty through a mutual friend due to circumstances that neither of us wanted. That chance exchange was thanks to the 2007 OPASTCO Summer Convention. That particular convention will always hold a special place in my heart, as I had the good fortune to moderate a panel of youth who discussed their use of technology.
The comments of these young panelists were interspersed with results from a survey, administered by Viodi and multiple independent telcos, which looked at the impact of technology on rural youth. In many ways, the results of the survey are still relevant, although some of the results are of historical interest. For instance, MySpace was just behind Facebook in terms of popularity with respondents’ major concern being the security of MySpace.
Although the theme of the panel and the survey was about technology, strong family ties were the common thread among these 8 young people, who ranged in age from 13 to mid-twenties. As mentioned in my comments at the time, youth are both a present and they represent the present. Upon further reflection and in reading about the Petty family and their incredible love and faith, the epiphany that I missed eleven years ago is that youth are the connection to what was and what will be in an everlasting candle of life.
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