Brian Condon. Scenario Planning session: Broadband Scotland 2010
This session is audience interactive. All have red (no) and green (yes) voting cards.
Scenario planning - don’t try to predict the future. Some of what speakers said is wrong and right. You don’t know which bits. What you need to do is anticipate future things that WILL happen. Need a plan for these. Example, demographics. Pensions problem is illustrative. Secondly, what MIGHT happen.
Scenario worlds. We over-extrapolate. Events produce different trajectories and outcomes of history. The more events, the harder it becomes to predict the future.
Scenario planning is about detecting the events. Classifying them. Identifying most important ones.
Two axes on our graph.
Interactivity axis — highly personalized communications choices, or fixed menu?
Timing axis. You get communications when you want it vs. when we provide it. What timing choices will be on offer?
2-axis chart with 5 blobs, described below
[Bottom left] Fixed choice, when we provide it = “commodity world”. Broadcast TV, cable and satellite. What we’re trying to get away from.
[Middle of chart] Mid on timing, mid on interactivity = “menu world”. Packaged up, easy, customer-centric. Interavtive HDTV is an example.
[Top middle] Mid on timing, high on personalised. “linked world.” Lots of WiFi, connectivity. Dominant device is PC.
[Upper middle right] High on timing, mid high on personalized = “portable world”. Mobile devices.
[Far top right] Very high on both = connected future.
We will now advocate each. Goes into role play. Linked and portable are nuts. Menu world is best. Daughter, 14, Annette. Access homework server via new media centre. HDTVs, repeaters around the house. PC languishes in a corner. Watches Buffy in a sub-window. Text chat in third window. Jack is 16, has a rash. Wife looks up NHS direct on big screen. Rather unpleasant, just turns out to be acne. Later on pick blockbuster release, watch in HDTV surround
Next presenter. Linked world. World will be so linked. Live north of Inverness. Will burn a boat in about a week. Local tradition.
Have mobile, will attach to local WiFi, upload video and still of boat burning. before I get home, eldest son will have already taken it, spliced in new audio and DVD clips. Get home, review footage. Use reflection product [from earlier Media Lab presentation] to talk together.
Next presenter. Portable world. Have been to a conference. Getting back into train. Saw little new clip. All of Inverness built on volcanic rock, he says. Multi-task, manage interruptions.
Video. How will you watch TV in 10 years? Lots of interview clips with conference attendees. What will you do with your mobile in 10 years?
Q: Will BB start to isolate us [socially]?
A: Information, communication and collaboration. Maintaining trelationships is where the growth is going to happen.
Q: Believe we will continue to have the 4 screens [public, TV, PC, mobile.] But believe world of fiber to the home won’t come about any time soon.
Q: One of things holding us back is focus on videal and audio. Want touch, smell, taste for richer interactive experience.
Q: Lots of people talking about technology. Icon on PC desktop called “My Stuff”. Needs to be made more useable. Stop focus on technology.
Q: Environmental benefits of paper being eliminated. [Red - audience thinks in 10 years paper will still be with us]
Q: Each of three world will happen for better off in society. Predict deepening digital divide where low-income people miss out on opportunities.
Q: Four sizes of screen limits to current technology. Will future see microchips enmbedded in people. [Solid green agreement that 7% will wear microchips in 10 years] Direct nerve implants where digital feeds go right to the brain.
Q: People don’t trust [biodevices] yet. ID cards too controversial. Trust issue to be overcome.
Q: View the future, need to talk to teens. What they want, on demand. We’re too cautious.
Q: Ponder on services. Buy 10 channels from Sky or Telewest, and 70% never used. How will we buy and pay for them?
Dilemma resolution in scenario planning. Do I pay as I use or pay in advance. [Vote: bundle vs. fixed price. More green for bundle than red for a-la carte.]
Q: Who will win from productivity improvements. Employer or employee? More profit or more leisure?
What happens to big orgs in a world enabled by broadband. Idea of work as a place you go to is erroneous and obsolete. In 10 years, the corporate as we know it today (big orgs of permanently employed people) will not be there any more.
Q: Most people will be suppliers, not employees. 75% of audience agree.
Q: As long as can sell our services over the Net we have a big threat, but physical presence still often needed.
Q: Paper has been backwards and forwards compatible. Will same be true of digital media?
A: Digital curation services are a mess. Keep your data on paper.
Will be losing stuff because on old format machines.
Q: Strong correlation between early adoption and social ineptness. Wrong people here to predict future.
Conferences self-selecting.
Q: My 2p worth. Britain will be a broadband backwater in 10 years. [Majority of audience agree.]
Q: Lost manufacturing, losing oil revenues. Goldman Sachs predict BRIC economies soon bigger than OECD countries. Big macroeconomic changes taking place.
Q: Like to support previous point on loss of UK comparative advantage. Evenyone else has access to same technology, capital. UK needs ability engage in social relationships, build trust. These are our comparative advantage.
Vote: Will have more trust in 10 years. Yes, small majority.
Scenario world chart has hardly changed since 1995. Make predictions about 2002. But only get small signals about the future.
Rene Carayol: What’s the future going to look like?
For certain fewer in the west compared to rest of world. Dominance of English language will ebb.
Scandinavia. Moving towards living alone. 80% in Finland of homes single occupation. Driven by technology. Personalization. Growth economies are BRIC. Collaboration works. Touch and smell: more than just the technologies. Technology doesn’t change the world, it people using the technology.
Living in a corrosively cynical world. “Bowling alone.” People working alone. 1950s America, bowling leagues oversubscribed. Now people bowlin alone, competing against themselves. Actually, recent evidence suggests this specific anecdote in bunk, just wish I could find that link again. MG. Is technology taking us down that road? Saw 4 Cs: content, community, colleagues and customers.
Lots to do with community in the exbibition room: broadband bus, etc.
Efficiency. Did some work with Sun Microsystems. Anyone can go and log in and work anywhere. By accident people worked from home, fewer offices, less travel. GBP3m saved. 50% split with employees.
Changing towards a freelance world. Used to work in magazine business, 3000 staff, 26000 freelancers. They never stepped over the door. Each worked for us, EMAP and Conde Nast. We say “we have best technology, you can only work for us, not the competiton.” They chose to work for the competition. Power lives with the people, not the organization.
Paper: will take 50 years or more to decline. “My newspaper” hasn’t happened yet.
Embedded microchips. David Beckham clothing, had smart clothes with chips. Not adopted, lasted a single season. [Public not ready.]
Not living in communities any more, we live alone. The older we get, less brave we become. Want to see technology literacy, look at teens with no money. They exploit free technology.
Ask a teen how to get more out of your mobile phone. Real lesson is speaking to someone with more knowledge than you who has no power over you.
Payment. New technology, new business model? New payment models rarely stick. Customers tell you what they want. Look at mobiles and PAYG. Can’t drop it, even if they want to.
Only 3% in UK work in organizations of over 5000 people. Exhibits here are about enabling small business. Local stuff. Simple things like putting interactive presentations online, a dialogue. Am personally desperate to achieve same. Don’t need to have to personally go everywhere in person to present.
90% of people work in small organisations. Installation costs of much technology nothing, benefits huge.
Think of Polaroid. Still stuck with raw materials that are chemical. Have gone bankrupt twice by not adopting digital.
Should have been chief selling officer, not CIO [in earlier career]. Nobody came to buy, had to sell my services to own corporation. Conversations were bits and bytes. Need to move to people.
Quality of content an issue. 200 channels of trash. Will personalisation change this? Maybe.
Denmark, 100% literacy. But 68% income tax, 25% VAT, 180% car tax. Yet everything state of the art. Hardly anyone in the airport, check yourself in. Robot cleaning. Everything touch-screen in the auditorium. Nobody seems to be having fun, though. 5.30pm everyone in the bar smoking, the only outlet they have. I’m just getting ready to misbehave by bedtime.
Denmark, everything perfect, a scary vision of the future. Then got on plane to Botswana. Size of UK + France. 1966 independence, never been to war since. Was one of poorest countries, then GBP per capita over $10,000 from diamonds. 1.4m population. 40% of population have HIV. Average life expectancy moving below 30.
UK is the richest it has ever been. Broadband pointless on its own. Went around Barclays branches in Botswana, connected by broadband. Banks firstly for high net worth individuals. Using BB network now to educate people on HIV. Interactive booths.
Massive stigma against AIDS. Barclays offer free treatment, not taken up because of stigma. Bigger mission for broadband.
38% of Barclays staff are HIV positive. Biggest business challenge of bosses is which funerals to attend.
Ends with poems on dire state of Africa from his latest book. Puts BB issues in perspective. Implicit challenge to audience to look beyond parochial commercial interests.
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