Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Fahrenheit 88: It's ComingTogether

It's 88 degrees here in sunny New York, and I'm reaching the time of day when I must get away from my window and retreat into the nether regions of my apartment. Having moved my car into a sweet unmetered parking spot that is good until Friday, I settled into the writing of my survey on high resolution business projectors.

Since I completed the survey yesterday -- translating it from a Japanese translation of a very long survey to one that is user-friendly -- my client forwarded a completely new list of the questions. Much of my work was for naught, but I can see the end of the tunnel now and will soon be onto the next stage of the project -- recruiting and tapping industry experts. I had thought this project was relevant to my media & entertainment focus only in that the client is an ad agency, but, as I get up to speed on the high resolution lingo & technology -- XGA, SXGA, WXGA, SVGA and all that - I see it all coming together -- once again. The world I have chosen is at the nexus of media, marketing and technology.

It all started when I was asked to create an overview of mobile marketing trends & practices for a magazine client. That led me to the world of SMS, MMS, MVNO and all those wireless abbreviations. A later engagement for a television network brought me a knowledge of multi-channel, satellite and telco television -- nonlinear, of course. And now, it's all about pixels -- which, of course, ties back to my high definition television engagement. That's only a small part of the technology I've inhaled over the past two years. It's very heady.

I am deeply entrenched in two books at the moment (as well as "Freakonomics"): "Television Disrupted" by Shelly Palmer and "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson. In addition, I'm listening to the executive summaries of a number of current business titles, more and more of which have a technological element to them. (The terms of the day are "wiki" and "open source," and I can't go a day without hearing about my IM buddy Jimmy Wales.)

I once had my skills evaluated to identify the best career. I was advised that with strong spacial visualization and math skills, I could have been an engineer. Ok, this isn't the same thing, but it's coming together. Exciting stuff.

1 comment:

Andy Breen said...

Karen,

I'm not exactly sure why I''m posting to your blog, except that I'm new to Linkedin and thought I'd peruse fellow OHS grads (I'm from the Paleolithic strata - 1970) in order to see how good a tool this thing might be for networking.

Beyond S. Highland Avenue, in common, I see we are also both Project Managers. My area is Finance / Accounting / Banking and IT. My knowledge of your areas is relatively limited. When I hear the terms 'marketing, media and convergence' in one sentence, it connotes the intersection of my local (Charlotte, NC) paperboy's throwing skills with the GIS coordinates of my driveway.

On the other hand (or is it the other arm?), I do have a number of relations in the media and entertainment industries. They are on both the left and right coasts and jaundiced to varying degrees. I even have one who performs at Caroline's Comedy Club, to break the monotony (hopefully).

Well, if any of this is of interest, please let me know. Otherwise, best of luck to you.

Regards,

Andy Breen