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Brainstorm 10.0

brainstorm 10.0Attended Brainstorm 10.0 today and had a chance to hear PC industry pundit John C. Dvorak.  Brainstorm had a great number of technology sessions for K12 Technology Directors.

The most surprising session was “HD video over IP for Distance Learning” because the original presenter did not show up….so I decided to try an Unconference session that ran two hours long.  Lots of great learning about how K12 Districts around the Midwest want to bring distance learning and HD video into the classroom.

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Latest read: Hot Property

Its all in the timing.  The global economic crisis has placed my latest read Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization into a pretty unique light. Regardless of the delay in the US economy the impact of globalization, technology and good old corporate espionage has impacted the world’s stage in manufacturing and distribution.

From aspirin to automobiles with computer technology stolen right in the middle. Author Pat Choate, an economist was the 1994 University of Oklahoma Arthur Barto Adams Alumni Fellow.  He has also written Agents of Influence: How Japan Manipulates America’s Political and Economic System.

The core arguments focus on the use of historical legal patents and technological advances of foreign companies competing against American interests by stealing.  Today its known as corporate espionage.  The end result: the US government does not protect companies in today’s global marketplace.

This book will leave most Americans frustrated.  Globalization has changed the way people and business must evolve to simply stay in business.  The auto industry is a timely example of how America lost this business to global competition.

The old assumptions in American business do not work today. When you innovate and invent, patents will protect your dedication and hard work against competitors around the globe.  How wrong Choate proves this idea is today.

Hot Property will quickly show you how far from the truth the real-world works … against you.  Reminds me of T-shirts I see around the Univ. Wisconsin-Madison campus:  “Don’t let school get in the way of your education”.Choate illustrates how major American companies like GM, Microsoft and Cisco are powerless to stop Chinese counterfeiters. To remain a “favorable company” in the Chinese market, American companies sacrifice their own development, technology and employees while trying to gain business in China.  It is somewhat amazing to see the RIAA use it’s legal arm against elderly Americans for downloading an MP3 file but turn a blind eye to the stunning levels of piracy in China.

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YouTube in America and China

This week my colleague ijohnpederson blogged about YouTube‘s January analytical results.  For the first time over 100 million internet users in the U.S. watched 6.3 Billion videos.  In the globalized world today that number is not very big. Consider how the world is connecting to the internet in larger and larger numbers:

Population
China: 1,330,044,544 (July 08) Source
US:         303,824,640 (July 08) Source

Internet Population
China:   298,000,000 (Jan 09)  22.4% of the population Source
US:        220,141,969 (June 08)  72.5% of the population  Source

China has almost as many people connected to the internet as America has people.  Think about that for a moment.  At Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society this week former Berkman fellow Rebecca MacKinnon addressed “The Tao of the Web: China and the future of the Internet” in a webcast about the role of censorship in China.