Tag Archives: mobility

American mobility: all the places I’ve lived – 2011 update

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If you’ve been around awhile, then yes, you have seen this item before, a couple of times. It originally posted on Jan. 25, 2008 and was updated on April 19, 2010. Unfortunately, I tend to move a lot, and it’s about to happen again. So every time I pull up the tent and head off somewhere else, I’ll be refreshing the post and giving people a chance to offer their thoughts on their own mobility and that of their families, friends and neighbors.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s back to packing.

We’ve become a very mobile culture. Education, jobs, adventure, marriage – there are a lot of things that call us away from home in ways that were unprecedented even a generation ago.

I’m like a lot of people in that I’ve moved around a lot, especially in the past few years. For instance, this coming Saturday will mark my 15th move since fall of 1993. Read more

The Internet is dead! Long live … television?

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So says Mark Cuban. Now, I’m typically a big Cuban fan. But I’m looking at an AdAge report on his remarks from yesterday’s Cable Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) Summit, and I’m a little puzzled.

Speaking at the Cable Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) Summit in Washington yesterday, Mr. Cuban declared “the Internet is dead” in an otherwise subdued panel that included executives such as ESPN President George Bodenheimer and Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt.

Read the rest at Black Dog…

Campaign mobile: it’s 1996 all over again

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Every time a new medium catches our attention we have to endure this awkward period where people who have decision-making and spending authority but no understanding of the medium at all treat it like it’s the old media they’re used to. Old assumptions, old practices … failure. It’s like in 1996 when ad agencies discovered the Internet. “I know, let’s digitize our print ads and use those!” Remember how much fun that was on a 9600 baud modem?

Now it’s 1996 for mobility, and nobody is not getting it quite as dramatically as the political sector. Read more

Obama campaign [third] to launch mobile, [third] to screw it up

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[UPDATE: turns out he’s not the first after all – see comments below for details.]

I’ve been yarping for months that no political campaign had yet launched mobile. There’s this massive youth generation that’s setting records for political and community activity, the mobile phone is one of their favorite things in the world, and all these politicians and their high-priced communications groups are doing … nada. I’ve talked to some of them, too.

  • “We’re working on it.”
  • “Yeah, thanks, I’ll pass your name on.”
  • “Sounds great – here’s a list of 30 people you might try.”
  • “Ummm, I have no idea who would be in charge of that.”

Well, finally this week the Obama campaign became the first to launch a mobile marketing campaign. Read more

Could more lives have been saved at Virginia Tech?

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I’m going to try and do this without looking like a vulture – I hate those who profiteer off the misfortunes of others and don’t want to be guilty of that crime myself – so let me begin with full disclosure. I’m a principal in a mobility consulting firm that offers the kinds of services I’m going to describe below. This makes me an informed observer, but it also makes me someone who might benefit financially from what I’m proposing. Take this for what it’s worth.

First, when things began unfolding in Blacksburg yesterday morning, the university notified its students via e-mail. There are a lot of problems with the response, starting with this: college students don’t use e-mail, at least not any more than they have to. Read more