RHetoric

I just recently got back from a trip to Seattle from Washington DC and decided to fly Virgin America for the first time.  Of all the onboard perks, I was most excited to try the Gogo Inflight Internet service.  Here are my quick thoughts:

Pros:

• Fast connection: I was able to log into Outlook exchange, AIM (my friend was quite shocked when I told him I was 35k feet up), and even stream Pandora without any problems.
• Price: For about $12 I was able to sign up and get Internet access for the duration of my flight. And on the red-eye back, they even cut me a discount, offering Gogo for about $6.
• Increased productivity: Now I can be online and responding to emails during those traditionally offline travel hours. But on the flip side:

Cons:

• Less Alone Time: Traditionally, long flights give you the opportunity to get some real work done without any interruptions. With Internet quickly becoming available on flights, those precious moments are dwindling.
• Hot: The lure of wifi persuaded even more passengers to fire up their computers, causing the plane to quickly get very toasty.
• No transfers: Your wireless service only lasts the duration of one flight. So if you're not flying direct, you'll have to choose which leg makes most sense to pay for Internet. Or pay for each leg, which would make Richard Branson very happy.

Just recently US Airways announced plans to outfit some of its fleet with onboard connectivity, making it the last major airline to do so.  Now that I've experienced wifi on a flight, I may not be able to go back to traveling offline.

With Google’s Sonal Shah and FCC counsel-turned-VC Julius Genachowski advising the president-elect on the transition, and the launch of a transition web site Change.gov, a new tech agenda is emerging. Here are some themes we will be following:

Public Sector Tech

• The new administration has been very clear that it will appoint a first-ever CTO to focus on federal agencies’ use of technology. The names being bandied about in the press, such as Larry Ellison and Steve Ballmer, are all way too high level for the job. This will not be a high profile position except within the limited circles of federal government I.T. contracting. Key areas of responsibility will be cybersecurity, transparency, and modernization.
• Continued investment in public safety technologies is likely. No one in the new White House wants to repeat the Katrina disaster on their watch. The main themes will be first responder technology, emergency communications networks, and interoperability.
• Rural areas will be a special focus for continued broadband deployment. This will include reform of the Universal Service Fund program and spectrum auctions. The emphasis will be on ubiquitous access to improve healthcare, emergency services, and general Internet access parity with urban areas.
• Expect lots of grantmaking, federal matches, and low cost federal loans for infrastructure build-out.

Health Care Tech

• The headline here is a $50 billion investment in health I.T. over five years. This seems implausible given our government’s financial situation, although it is a safe bet that Congress will approve more funding in this area.
• Emerging health IT themes are patient safety, personalized medicine, quality measurement, access to care, and efficiencies (such as  in claims processing).  The technology focus is on widespread adoption of electronic health records, standards, and decision support technologies.
• Rural areas are also expected to be addressed, primarily through the expansion of telemedicine technologies.
• Veterans medical care will be front and center in the president-elect’s first budget request. This will include more funding for an already progressive deployment of health I.T.
• John Halamka has a good round-up of more specific predictions for first year on his blog, here.
• Expect lots of demonstration projects, grantmaking, and funding for major agency-driven programs.

Education Tech

• The key themes are better teachers, No Child Left Behind reform, and more emphasis on math & science in K-12.
• Technology is not specifically addressed in the current education narrative coming out of the transition team.

It’s still very early, and the incoming Administration is in a safe harbor period of being able to make promises that it knows the Congress won’t keep. Also remember that every president submits budgets to Congress that include spending initiatives that will never see the light of day in an appropriations bill, but they throw them in there anyway to make a policy statement.

The next step in the transition process is the float. This is where the transition team begins floating names of potential cabinet and agency appointments in the press, to guage reactions. The names emerging from this process will provide more clues about the new administration’s policy proposals.

I am in LA attending the Digital Watermarking Alliance’s symposium, “Digital Watermarking: Enabling Digital Media Commerce in 2008 and Beyond.” My team has been hard at work to make this event a success. Outside the hotel, the writers strike is just underway and it does not appear it will be short-lived. The writers have got to get it right this time.

They are still smarting over their lackluster residuals on DVD’s and fearful of getting the short straw again as content finds its way to the Internet. Residuals are payments you receive for your work on a film or show, such as when it goes into reruns. The DVD residual formula is based on the old VHS formula, which was forged when VHS was new, unproven, and expensive. As the production costs of VHS, and then DVD’s, went way way down, the quantities of VHS and then DVDs in the marketplace exploded - but the formula did not allow for any of that upside to go to the writers.

So they are rightfully worried about the economics of Internet distribution, and trying to get their fair share of the future upside baked into a new formula. That’s why the Digital Watermarking Alliance event is so timely. Here we have a room full of denizens of digital distribution of movies and television - Google, Microsoft, NBC, MPAA to name a few - talking about all of the new ways to give consumers the content they crave, via the Internet and other digital methods.

This market is powering up and ready to go into overdrive. The writers are wise to insist on a better deal than before.